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THE  DIVINE  ASPECT  OF  HISTORY 


IN   TWO   VOLUMES 
VOLUME    I 


CAMBRIDGE   UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

C.   F.   CLAY,   Manager 

ILontlon:   FETTER   LANE,   B.C. 

EBmfaurfftj:    loo  PRINCES  STREET 


i^tto  Sork:    G.  P,  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

BoTnbHjj,  Calrutla  anli  ^atiras:    MACMILLAN  AND  CO..  Ltd. 

aroronto:    J.    M.   DENT  AND  SONS,   Ltd. 

Cokp.o:    THE   MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 


All  rights  reserved 


(THE  DIVINE  ASPECT  OF  HISTORY 


by 
JOHN   RICKARDS   MOZLEY 


Take  better  part,  with  manlier  heart, 

Thine  adult  spirit  can  ; 
No  God,  no  Truth,  receive  it  ne'er — 

Believe  it  ne'er — O  Man  ! 
But  turn  not  then  to  seek  again 

What  first  the  ill  began  ; 
No  God,  it  saith  ;    ah,  wait  in  faith 

God's  selfcompleting  plan  ; 
Receive  it  not,  but  leave  it  not. 

And  wait  it  out,  O  Man  ! 

Arthur  Hugh  Clough 


VOLUME  I 


Cambridge  ; 

at  the  University  Press 

1916 


LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFO] 
SAISTA  BARBARA 


TO   THE   DISCOVERER  OF  THE  LAW  OF   UNIVERSAL  GRAVITATION 
ILLUSTRIOUS  AMONG  THE  IMMORTALS 

ISAAC  NEWTON 

THIS  TREATISE 

WHICH  GIVES  REASONS  FOR  THE  BELIEF 

THAT  A  SPIRITUAL  FORCE  ISSUES  FROM  GOD 

WHEREBY  LIFE  IS  MADE  DOMINANT  OVER  MATERIAL  FORCES 

AND  SOULS  IN  THE  FLESH  ARE  LINKED  WITH  SOULS  DEPARTED 

IS  DEDICATED 


PREFACE 

THE  purpose  of  this  book  includes  a  certain  amount  of 
negation,  but  is  nevertheless  essentially  positive  and 
affirmative.  The  negation  wiU  be  found  in  arguments  directed 
to  show  the  unhistorical  character  of  the  Biblical  miracles;  the 
miracles  of  heahng,  in  the  New  Testament,  being  admitted  to  be 
exceptions  in  some  degree,  and  to  contain  some  truth.  Certain 
parts  of  the  doctrinal  system  of  the  New  Testament  are  too 
dependent  on  the  miracles  to  stand  when  the  miracles  are  dis- 
carded; but  there  are  other  parts  of  New  Testament  doctrine 
which  remain  uninjured,  even  though  we  disbeheve  most  of  the 
miracles. 

The  positive  affirmation  of  this  book  lies  in  its  vindication  of 
the  main  current  of  Biblical  teaching  as  unique  in  its  spiritual 
truth,  especially  the  teaching  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth;  whom 
Christians  are  right  in  regarding  as  the  revealer  of  the  way  into 
eternal  hfe,  and  as  the  reconciler  of  God  and  man,  and  who 
was  also  (though  this  is  not  the  way  in  which  Christians  commonly 
put  it)  the  first  of  the  sons  of  men  to  feel  intimately  his  true 
filial  relation  to  God,  which  relation  he  also  taught  us  to  believe 
as  belonging  to  ourselves,  and  as  capable  of  being  realised  by  us 
if  we  trust  God  and  pray  to  him  with  all  our  hearts.  That 
Jesus  is  rightly  called  the  Christ,  or  in  other  words  the  ruler  of 
all  mankind  (which  is  what  the  title  Christ  implies)  is  also 
affirmed  in  this  book ;  though  it  must  be  understood  that  the  rule 
attributed  to  him  Hes  in  his  attractive  power,  not  in  any  external 
compulsion  exercised  or  authorised  by  him.  External  com- 
pulsion, though  not  always  avoidable  among  men,  is  quite 
different  from  the  government  and  the  organisation  which  spring 
from  true  religion. 

The  Christian  society  which  has  sprung  from  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  Christ  is  regarded  in  this  book  as  a  society  which  has  been 
in  many  ways  truly  faithful  to  its  Master,  and  truly  Uke  him,  but 
which  yet  has  been  liable,  as  all  men  are  liable,  to  error ;  and  the 
error  has  sometimes  been  great  and  complex ;  but  in  the  Christian 


viii  PREFACE 

society  the  possibility  of  reform  and  renovation  has  always 
existed.  At  the  present  day  the  greatest  difficulty  of  the  Christian 
society  lies  in  the  doubt  whether  the  critical  intellect  of  man  has 
any  right  at  all  to  judge  of  those  rehgious  emotions  which  have 
been  handed  down  as  sacred  among  Christians  from  generation 
to  generation.  It  is  maintained  in  this  book  that,  though  the 
critical  intellect  may  doubtless  go  wrong,  yet  it  cannot  be 
altogether  debarred  from  that  province. 

It  is  a  question  which  cannot  be  quite  disregarded,  in  view  of 
the  present  divisions  in  the  Christian  society,  which  part  of  that 
society  has  preserved  the  original  type,  instituted  by  Jesus  himself, 
most  truly,  and  with  most  profit  to  the  world  at  large.  But  I 
have  thought  that  the  unity,  rather  than  the  differences,  of  the 
Christian  society  ought  to  be  accentuated  at  the  present  day, 
and  I  have  given  no  distinct  answer  to  the  above  question; 
though  some  account  of  the  separation  between  the  eastern  and 
western  churches,  and  of  that  between  the  Roman  church  and 
the  Reformed  churches,  had  of  course  to  be  given,  and  has  been 
given. 

The  great  reUgions  of  the  world  outside  Christianity,  Brah- 
minism.  Buddhism,  Zoroastrianism,  the  worship  of  ancestors  as 
practised  in  China  and  Japan  (not  quite  without  recognition  of 
a  Divine  Being),  the  ancient  religions  of  Greece  and  Rome  (which 
have  now  perished,  but  still  affect  us  by  the  extraordinary  merit, 
and  even  the  spiritual  insight,  of  Greek  and  Roman  writers),  and 
finally  the  religion  of  Islam,  are  regarded  as  possessing  true  merit, 
and  as  capable  of  affording  instruction  to  ourselves;  though 
they  have  not  penetrated  into  the  centre  of  religious  truth  in  at 
all  the  degree  in  which  Christianity  has  done  so.  Judaism  is 
regarded  in  this  book  as  so  near  to  Christianity,  as  hardly  to  be 
outside  it — at  any  rate  it  ought  to  be  so  regarded  in  the  estimation 
of  Christians. 

I  trust  I  have  never  forgotten  that  historical  conclusions 
cannot  have  mathematical  certainty.  The  attempt  to  assimilate 
history  to  science,  by  treating  the  history  of  our  contemporaries 
as  that  which  it  is  most  important  for  us  to  learn,  after  which 
(it  is  suggested)  we  may  mount  up  to  the  more  recondite  regions 
of  medisevalism  and  antiquity,  appears  to  me  an  impossible 
attempt.  Contemporary  history  cannot  be  understood  without 
reference  to  the  past ;  hence,  in  spite  of  all  difficulties,  we  have 
to  begin  with  the  past,  and  then  we  can  give  a  consecutive  story, 
in  the  proper  lines  of  evolution. 


PREFACE  ix 

But  it  is  not  of  course  to  be  disguised  that  the  history  of  the 
remote  past  does  present  us  with  many  difficulties.  I  do  not  think 
I  have  generally  been  paradoxical ;  but  it  may  be  proper  to  men- 
tion where  I  have  most  diverged  from  the  conclusions  arrived  at 
^  by  previous  writers.  I  have  ventured  to  put  the  date  of  Zoroaster 
in  the  first  half  of  the  sixth  century  before  Christ,  beUeving  that 
the  Magi  had  had  a  creditable  career  of  considerable  length 
before  he  appeared  among  them,  and  that  their  less  worthy 
characteristics  in  after  times  were  in  no  wise  chargeable  to 
Zoroaster,  but  were  the  result  of  their  unsuccessful  revolt  against 
the  Persians  in  the  time  of  Darius — a  calamity  which  they  had 
not  the  strength  to  endure  without  loss  of  rectitude. 

Another  point  in  which  I  do  not  stand  alone,  but  in  which 
still  the  common  opinion  is  against  me,  is  my  belief  that  Zerub- 
^  babel  lived,  not  under  Cyrus  and  Darius  Hystaspes,  but  under 
Darius  Nothus,  a  century  later  than  is  usually  supposed.  The 
effect  of  this  alteration  of  historical  view  is  very  much  to  raise 
the  character  of  the  Jews  of  the  fifth  century  before  Christ,  who 
on  this  showing  had  to  surmount  difficulties  far  more  serious  than 
is  usually  conceived  in  obtaining  their  restoration  to  their  own 
country,  and  who  did  surmount  those  difficulties  with  extra- 
ordinary patience,  fidelity,  and  resolution.  But  I  must  refer  to 
my  fourteenth  chapter,  and  to  the  first  appendix  to  that  chapter, 
for  the  reasons  for  this  opinion. 

It  is  not  quite  the  same  sort  of  difference  from  ordinary 
opinion,  but  I  may  note  it  here,  that  I  hold  the  Christian  Church 
■/  of  the  fourth  century  after  Christ  to  have  had  a  greater  share  of 
responsibility  for  the  fall  of  the  western  empire  than  is  generally 
beheved;  at  the  same  time  I  think  it  was  want  of  experience 
more  than  moral  error  which  misled  the  Church  authorities  of 
that  time;    so  that  it  does  not  tell  vitally  against  them. 

In  my  first  chapter  I  have  expressed  the  opinion  that  organi- 
sation, which  so  powerfully  assists  human  action,  has  also  had 
a  share  in  the  evolution  of  sun  and  stars.  This  is  an  opinion 
■  which  does  not  admit  of  speedy  verification;  but  if  organisation 
were  found,  not  merely  to  increase  human  power  on  the  earth, 
but  also  to  increase  the  natural  powers  of  the  earth  itself,  to  make 
it  permanently  more  fruitful,  more  filled  with  living  agencies 
(and  living  agencies  that  work  harmoniously  together),  we  should 
have  ground  for  expecting  a  stiU  greater  development  of  terres- 
trial energy  as  time  goes  on;  and  it  is  impossible  to  set  limits 
to  such  an  advance.     If  mankind  coiild  peacefully  unite  for  a- 

a5 


X  PREFACE 

few  centuries,  we  should  know  better  than  we  do  now  what  is 
the  power  of  organisation  in  raising  the  whole  condition  of  our 
earthly  habitation;  and  it  is  fervently  to  be  hoped  that  this 
experience  may  be  won  by  mankind.  The  present  treatise  en- 
deavours to  show  that  such  a  hope  is  justified  by  our  knowledge 
of  the  power  which  resides  in  rehgion. 

This  is,  I  think,  all  that  I  need  say  in  regard  to  special  points 
mentioned  in  the  present  work ;  but  there  are  some  more  observa- 
tions that  I  must  make. 

The  anthropologists,  I  know,  have  added  much  to  our  know- 
ledge of  the  curious  habits  and  superstitious  fears  which  have 
accompanied  the  evolution  of  religion;  but  the  true  evolution 
of  religion  is  that  which  takes  place  by  the  divine  enlargement 
of  the  spirit  of  man;  and  my  present  belief  is  that  the  anthro- 
pologists have  not  added  much  to  our  knowledge  of  this.  If  I 
am  shown  to  be  wrong,  I  will  gladly  confess  my  error. 

Metaphysical  philosophy  is  capable  of  being  a  great  support 
to  reUgion,  and  I  can  by  no  means  think  of  it  as  an  unfruitful 
subject,  though  a  very  difficult  one  it  certainly  is.  The  philosophy 
which  Socrates  began,  and  Plato  continued,  was  the  first  attempt 
to  show  the  importance  of  the  mental  element  in  experience ; 
and  they  were  right  in  connecting  it  with  religion ;  but  detailed 
clearness  of  view  was  not  to  be  expected  at  that  stage  of  the  world's 
history.  Indeed  for  long  afterwards,  though  ethics  advanced, 
metaphysical  philosophy  remained  as  a  kind  of  vision,  in  which 
the  divine  nature  was  the  culminating  point,  and  man  was 
somehow  transcendentally  connected  with  this  divinity.  Kant 
was  the  first  to  show  that  these  beliefs  as  to  God  and  man  are  not 
proved  by  such  arguments  as  had  been  offered  on  their  behalf 
from  various  quarters ;  at  the  same  time  he  did  not  deny  the 
value  of  the  beliefs;  and  in  practice  he  held  that  God,  human 
freedom,  and  immortal  life  were  guiding  conceptions  for  mankind. 
To  practical  Ufe  then,  the  proof  of  these  doctrines  was  committed  ; 
and  if  the  view  of  history  given  in  the  present  treatise  be  correct, 
practical  life  confirms  them.  The  embracing  of  great  concep- 
tions because  they  are  necessary,  and  proved  to  be  necessary, 
for  our  practical  guidance — that  is,  I  think,  the  central  character 
of  true  philosophy ;  and  Kant  was  the  person  who  first  distinctly 
led  men  to  this  kind  of  view.  However,  philosophy  radiates 
from  this  centre  into  all  manner  of  inquiries  and  subjects  of 
thought ;  and  there  is  just  a  Uttle  more  that  I  should  Mke  to  say 
of  it  in  this  place. 


PREFACE  xi 

First,  those  philosophers  who  are  called  idealists,  who  have 
insisted  that  matter  is  an  unmeaning  word  unless  mind  is 
assumed  as  well — that  matter  acquires  its  definite  character 
through  the  percipient  mind,  and  would  be  vague  unless  it  were 
regarded  as  somehow  perceived — these  philosophers  are  not  easily 
refuted ;  though  in  our  ordinary  life  we  seem  to  disregard  them, 
and  to  treat  matter  and  mind  as  separate  things.  Berkeley  in 
England,  perhaps  Malebranche  in  France,  and  Fichte,  ScheUing, 
and  Hegel  in  Germany,  are  the  most  famous  of  these  philosophers ; 
but  the  most  cardinal  proposition  of  all  idealism  appears  to  me 
best  expressed  by  a  Scotch  philosopher  of  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  James  Frederick  Ferrier.  He  said  that  our 
personal  seK  is  known  to  us  as  the  universal  element  in  all  our 
knowledge;  that  it  cannot  be  thought  of  as  a  particular  thing 
among  other  things.  It  is  true  that  in  the  spiritual  world  our 
self  is  regarded  as  a  self  among  other  selves;  but  in  the  world 
of  our  sensuous  perception  this  is  not  so ;  in  that  external  world 
our  seK  is  a  universal  element,  present  in  every  perception  of 
ours.  I  am  not  quoting  Ferrier's  words,  but  I  am  sure  I  am 
giving  his  meaning  rightly,  as  expressed  in  his  Institutes  of  Meta- 
physic ;  and  it  appears  to  me  that  he  expresses  both  a  true  plain 
fact,  and  also  a  true  mystery  in  which  that  plain  fact  is  involved. 
We  cannot  escape  the  region  of  mystery  even  in  our  most  common- 
place thoughts,  nor  can  we  desire  to  escape  it,  for  in  mystery 
Hes  the  seed  of  progress.  It  is  evident  how  entirely  this  kind  of 
view  fits  in  with  the  rehgious  temperament,  and  sanctions  it  on 
the  intellectual  side. 

The  same  result  is  enforced  on  us  by  another  consideration, 
which  biological  science  makes  absolutely  clear.  Our  senses,  or 
in  other  words  the  faculties  by  which  we  apprehend  the  external 
world,  are  growths,  just  as  much  as  a  tree  is  a  growth ;  they 
began,  ages  ago,  with  a  very  small  power  of  discernment ;  they 
have  increased  in  power  until  sight  and  hearing  have  become 
able  to  discriminate  in  a  truly  marvellous  degree.  But  is  it 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  we  have  come  to  an  end  of  this  growing 
process?  Will  not  new  methods  of  perception  rise  up  in  the 
generations  to  come?  May  we  not  hope,  and  even  expect,  that 
the  souls  of  the  departed,  who  are  stiU  joined  to  us  by  love,  will 
be  known  by  us  in  due  time  with  a  knowledge  that  we  shall 
recognise  as  genuine  and  unquestionable?  I  think  we  may 
expect  this. 

Of  the  authorities  referred  to  in  this  book,  there  are  three, 


xii  PREFACE 

not  mentioned  as  often  as  might  be  expected  by  English  or  Scottish 
theologians,  but  looked  upon  by  myself  with  much  admiration, 
and  therefore  proper  to  be  mentioned  here.  One  is  the  Acta 
Conciliorum,  published  in  Paris  early  in  the  eighteenth  century 
by  Harduin  and  his  fellow  Jesuits,  This  work  is  invaluable  for 
anyone  who  wishes  to  understand  the  mediaeval  Church.  Another 
is  the  Church  History  of  Neander ;  a  work  clumsy,  it  is  true,  in  its 
structure,  but  so  serene,  impartial,  and  large  in  its  knowledge, 
that  every  thoughtful  religious  inquirer  must  be  the  better  for 
reading  it,  especially  the  later  volumes  of  it.  The  third  authority, 
or  perhaps  I  should  rather  say  set  of  authorities,  is  that  great 
series  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  edited  by  the  late  Professor  Max 
Miiller,  and  written  by  learned  and  able  men  of  many  nations; 
the  most  enlightening  set  of  works  on  the  Asiatic  religions  which 
has  ever  been  published  in  England. 

A  few  more  books,  for  different  reasons,  I  must  mention  here. 
Our  greatest  English  historian.  Gibbon,  is  so  necessary  to  every 
one  who  undertakes  to  say  or  write  anything  about  the  latter  days 
of  imperial  Rome,  that  to  name  him  is  sufficient.  At  the  time 
when  I  wrote  the  twenty-third  chapter  of  the  present  work,  1  had 
not  read  Mr  F.  Warre-Comish's  book  on  Chivalry ;  else  I  should 
have  borrowed  some  of  the  descriptive  touches  given  in  that 
interesting  account  of  the  most  picturesque  side  of  mediaeval 
life.  Lastly,  I  must  not  leave  unrecognised,  in  relation  to  the 
question  of  miracles,  what  is  I  suppose  the  best  defence  of  the 
New  Testament  miracles  written  in  England  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  Bampton  Lectures  for  1865,  by  my  uncle,  Dr  James 
Bowling  Mozley,  who  shortly  afterwards  became  Regius  Professor 
of  Divinity  at  Oxford.  It  is  a  work  full  of  acute  and  valuable 
remarks,  but  it  does  not  include  any  critical  examination  of  the 
gospel  evidence,  which  is  not,  I  think,  at  all  as  strong,  when 
properly  weighed,  as  it  is  assumed  to  be  in  those  Lectures;  also 
the  characteristic  results  of  Christian  doctrine  are  assumed  to  be 
altogether  good,  whereas  the  action  of  the  Christian  Church  in 
the  middle  ages  was  often  of  a  very  questionable  kind  indeed, 
and  the  prima  facie  (and  1  think  the  correct)  view  is  that  this  was 
not  unconnected  with  Christian  doctrine.  If  the  greater  power 
wielded  by  the  human  race,  from  its  European  centre,  in  modern 
times  as  compared  with  antiquity,  be  drawn  from  the  strength 
of  the  Christian  religion,  as  I  think  is  the  case  (and  I  have  argued 
in  this  sense  in  the  present  work)  if  the  greater  respect  paid  to 
women,  and  greater  mildness  in  general  behaviour,  be  due  to  the 


PREFACE  xiii 

same  cause — must  not  the  fantastic  asceticism,  the  repression  of 
the  intellect,  the  persecution  of  Jews  and  heretics,  which  for  so 
many  centuries  were  ordinary  forms  of  Christian  action,  be 
reckoned  as  indicating  some  fault  in  Christian  doctrine?  To 
recover  from  errors,  is  a  power  inherent  in  the  Christian  Church ; 
but  to  deny  the  errors  of  the  past,  is  impossible;  and  the 
natural  inferences  to  be  drawn  from  those  errors  must  not  be 
shirked. 

One  more  literary  production,  and  a  very  recent  one,  I  must 
now  mention.  In  the  Observer  newspaper  for  January  30,  Feb- 
ruary 6,  and  February  13  of  the  present  year  are  three  articles 
by  that  eminent  physicist,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  so  similar  in  their 
purport  to  the  view  advanced  in  the  first  chapter  of  this  treatise 
(and  expanded  at  the  close  of  the  twenty-seventh  chapter)  that 
I  cannot  avoid  speaking  of  them  here.  The  gist  of  them  is  that 
life  is  the  restorative  element  in  the  universe.  Here  is  the  para- 
graph in  which  this  thesis  is  summarised  (a  paragraph  prefixed 
to  each  of  the  three  articles  mentioned  above) : 

"It  has  been  assumed  from  a  physical  point  of  view  that  the 
universe  must  come  to  an  end,  unless  it  receives  a  new  impulse 
of  creation,  such  as  it  must  have  had  at  its  beginning.  Every 
mathematical  thinker  during  the  last  century  has  held  that 
cosmic  energy  must  decay  by  dissipation  of  heat — that  the 
whole  clock  of  things,  as  it  were,  must  come  to  the  stillness  of 
an  everlasting  death.  This  is  the  greatest  and  most  mysterious 
of  all  the  themes  of  pessimism.  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  seeks  escape 
from  the  physical  aspect  of  the  problem,  and  suggests  that  it 
may  be  found  in  the  nature  of  life." 

In  the  articles  themselves,  the  following  is  the  central  pro- 
position which  elucidates  the  whole:  after  saying  that  "Life  is 
definitely  not  a  form  of  energy,"  Sir  Ohver  Lodge  adds,  "Life 
certainly  guides  or  directs  energy ;  that  is  its  physical  function ; 
and  I  see  no  reason  against  some  form  of  life  being  able  to  direct 
energy  uphill,  so  to  speak,  instead  of  being  only  able  to  utiHse 
energy  while  in  process  of  falling  down."  A  luminous  sentence ; 
but  I  venture  to  add  that  this  guiding  function  of  life  is  im- 
possible, unless  we  take  into  account  Herbert  Spencer's  theory 
of  an  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy  beyond  our  senses,  which 
streams  into  the  world  surveyed  by  our  senses.  For  the  actual 
point  of  the  guidance  of  material  energy  by  the  living  agency  lies 
in  a  region  unknown  to  us.  Hence  I  have  placed  this  theory  of 
Herbert  Spencer  at  the  foundation  of  the  whole  view,  and  withou.t 


3riv  PREFACE 

it  I  do  not  believe  that  the  view  can  stand.  Further,  considering 
the  mysterious  nature  of  life,  the  possibiUty  follows  that  life  of 
a  very  exalted  kind  exists  in  the  sun  and  stars  now.  This  addition 
to  the  theory  Sir  OUver  Lodge  does  not  (I  think)  hold;  but  it 
explains  a  very  great  deal,  if  it  be  true. 

But  now  I  must  refer  to  another  point — a  small  one.  I  trust 
that  the  reader  will  not  think  the  absence  of  capital  letters,  in 
pronouns  indicating  God  or  Jesus  Christ,  a  sign  of  want  of 
reverence;  which  reverence  I  truly  feel.  But  I  think  that  in 
naming  the  most  exalted  beings,  it  is  a  wrong  habit  of  mind  to 
feel  oneself  obliged  to  express  that  exaltation  by  a  particular 
sign ;  and  it  has  a  tendency  to  lead  other  people  into  hypocrisy ; 
for  there  are  sceptics  in  the  world  who  do  not  want  to  flaunt  their 
scepticism,  and  yet  are  harmfully  affected  if  through  custom  they 
express  themselves  so  as  to  imply  belief.  The  practice  of  using 
capital  letters,  in  these  cases,  is  a  modem  one. 

I  must  not  forget  to  express  my  thanks  to  those  private 
friends,  who  during  a  long  coiirse  of  years  have  helped  me,  in  one 
way  or  another,  in  the  work  which  is  now  completed.  There  are 
too  many  of  these  for  me  to  mention  them  all  by  name.  But 
I  cannot  leave  unnamed  Henry  Sidgwick,  now  departed,  who 
represented  to  me  the  duty,  for  candour's  sake,  of  giving  a  careful 
account  of  my  opinions,  for  the  benefit  of  persons  interested  in 
religion;  or  Henry  Graham  Dakyns,  also  departed,  whose  con- 
tinual sympathy  and  encouragement  were  of  the  greatest  value 
to  me ;  or  Warren  Maude  Moorsom,  whose  interest  in  the  book 
has  been  imfaiUng,  and  who  told  me  when  it  ceased  to  be  amor- 
phous and  became  an  organism.  To  my  three  surviving  children 
I  am  also  greatly  indebted;  to  my  elder  son,  Edward,  for  a 
great  deal  of  excellent  criticism ;  to  my  younger  son,  Kenneth, 
for  information  concerning  the  early  Christian  writers  and  also 
concerning  modem  continental  opinion ;  and  to  my  daughter, 
Eleanor,  for  some  valuable  suggestions.  I  trust  my  readers 
clearly  understand  that  the  kind  help  thus  acknowledged  is  no 
indication  that  the  helpers  are  in  agreement  with  the  views 
expressed  in  these  volumes.  In  these  difficult  and  delicate  subjects 
a  helping  hand  is  often  given  where  agreement  cannot  be  reached  ; 
and  it  would  be  a  great  pity  if  the  acknowledgment  of  such  help 
were  debarred  by  reason  of  intellectual  differences. 

This  also  is  the  best  place  for  me  to  say  that  I  am  sorry  if 
I  give  pain  to  any  by  disturbing  ancient  landmarks ;  but,  conversely, 
I  may  ask  my  readers  not  to  judge  of  my  book  by  reading  a  few 


PREFACE  XV 

casual  pages,  without  giving  the  trouble  necessary  to  grasp  the 
purport  of  the  whole. 

Finally,  let  me  not  omit  to  mention  the  many  benefits  for 
which  I  am  indebted  to  the  University  of  Cambridge,  from  the 
time  when  I  first  entered  her  walls  as  an  undergraduate  in  the 
year  1858,  down  to  the  present  day,  when  she  has  done  me  the 
honour  of  pubhshing  my  book. 

J.  R.  M. 
May,  1916. 


CONTENTS   OF  VOLUME  I 
Preface pages  vii-xv 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  UNIVERSE   IN  RELATION  TO   MAN 

The  contrast  between  history  and  physical  science;  the  lesser  range 
of  history  more  than  compensated  for  by  its  emotional  interest.  The 
importance  of  organisation  as  a  method  of  progress  wielded  by  man ; 
the  question  raised,  whether  this  progress  will  always  find  support  in  new 
energ\'  continually  evolved.  The  view  of  Herbert  Spencer  as  to  this; 
the  alliance,  though  not  identity,  of  Herbert  Spencer's  view  with  the 
religious  view.  Organisation  declared  to  be  probably  the  secret  of  the 
evolution  of  the  stellar  universe,  and  Divine  Power  the  secret  of  eternal 
organisation.  The  relation  of  this  theory  to  the  theories  of  Helmholtz 
and  of  Darwin  drawn  out  at  length       ....  pages  1-27 

CHAPTER  II 
ANCIENT  RELIGION:     BABYLONIA,  EGYPT,  INDIA 

As  speech  is  the  characteristic  fa^Julty  which  most  distinguishes  man 
from  the  lower  animals,  so  writing  is  the  characteristic  art  which  most 
distinguishes  civilised  from  uncivilised  man.  Writing  probably  invented 
either  in  Babylonia  or  in  Egypt,  two  countries  in  which  religion  had  a 
strong  development;  a  brief  statement  as  to  their  religious  character. 
A  more  detailed  account  of  the  Brahminical  religion  of  India,  especially 
as  known  to  us  in  the  Rig- Veda,  the  Upanishads,  and  the  Laws  of 
Manu 28-56 

CHAPTER  III 
INDIA  CONTINUED:    SIDDARTHA  THE   BUDDHA 

Buddhism  a  pvirification  of  Brahminism :  an  accovint  of  the  founder  of 
Buddhism,  known  as  Siddartha  personally,  Gautama  by  his  family  name, 
and  finally  as  "the  Buddha."  The  great  value  of  his  teaching  lies  in  the 
love  for  mankind  which  he  felt  and  inculcated :  he  was  however  defective 
in  the  hope  of  happiness,  and  in  trust  towards  God.  His  death  very 
touching  in  the  peeice  and  harmony  which  breathed  through  it;  an 
account  of  it  given      .........        57-77 

CHAPTER  IV 

ANCIENT   RELIGION:    PERSIA 

Extraordinary  difficulty  attends  the  inquiry  into  the  religion  of  ancient 
Persia,  whether  it  be  thought  of  as  the  religion  of  Zoroaster  (Zarathustra) 
or  as  the  religion  of  the  Magi.     Zoroaster  is  here  first  described ;    the 


CONTENTS  xvii 

Gathas,  the  most  ancient  part  of  the  sacred  books  known  collectively  as 
the  Avesta,  are  the  authority  concerning  him,  and  were  no  doubt  partly 
written  by  him.  He  was  one  of  the  Magi;  but  the  Magi  had  existed 
long  before  him,  and  had  had  some  religious  insight,  though  he  had  a 
religious  insight  much  surpassing  theirs.  He  is  here  treated  as  having 
lived  in  the  first  half  of  the  sixth  centxiry  before  Christ  (reasons  are  given 
for  this  opinion,  which  in  modern  times  is  novel) ;  the  Magi  inherited  that 
increased  authority  which  he  had  won  for  them,  but  unluckily  (soon  after 
his  death)  deteriorated  greatly ;  this  was  the  result  of  their  blamable  revolt 
against  the  Persians,  which  was  put  down  by  Darius,  son  of  Hystaspes. 
They  never  quite  recovered  their  integrity,  and  the  Vendidad,  the  part  of 
the  Avesta  which  is  most  characteristically  theirs,  was  no  doubt  written 
after  the  revolt  just  named,  and  exhibits  their  later  and  very  strange 
doctrines.  Yet  the  Parsis,  the  modern  descendants  of  the  ancient 
Persians,  have  liberated  themselves  from  most  of  these  errors.  Mithraism 
is  here  regarded  (following  Cumont)  as  the  outcome,  not  of  the  original 
Magianism  of  Media,  but  of  the  side  current,  the  Magianism  of  Babylon 

78-109 

Appendix  to  Chapter  IV 

On  the  identification  of  Vistaspa,  the  Royal  Convert  of  Zoroaster, 
with  Vistaspa  the  father  of  Darius 109-110 

CHAPTER  V 

ANCIENT   RELIGION:    CHINA  AND   JAPAN 

The  primitive  history  of  China  known  to  us  more  or  less  from  the 
third  millennium  before  Christ;  the  character  of  the  Chinese,  prone  to 
reverence,  imbued  with  civilising  instincts,  simple  and  quaint  in  their 
religion  (which  includes  ancestor  worship),  superstitious  in  a  mild  way. 
Some  account  of  the  two  great  philosophers,  Lao-tsze  and  Confucius. 
The  progress  of  Japan  referred  to 111-135 

CHAPTER  VI 

ANCIENT   RELIGION:    GREECE 

The  illuminating  clearness  of  the  Greek  spirit;  the  precision  of  Greek 
history  when  compared  with  other  ancient  histories;  yet  the  want  of 
depth  in  the  Greek  character,  which  led  to  a  fantastic  mythology  in  their 
religion.  The  common  feeling  of  Hellenism  among  the  Greeks  (that  is, 
the  feeling  that  they  were  all  of  one  race)  traced  to  three  causes ;  the  great 
effort  of  the  Trojan  war ;  the  splendid  poems,  popular  in  every  part  of 
Greece,  by  which  that  war  was  celebrated ;  and  lastly,  the  strength  of  the 
Dorian  character— the  Dorians  being  also  mainly  responsible  for  the  con- 
secration of  the  worship  of  Apollo  in  the  oracular  shrine  of  Delphi,  whence 
came  a  certain  unity  in  the  religion  of  the  whole  race.  The  Orphic  religious 
societies  brought  in  a  certain  solemnity  of  feeling.  Athens,  in  the  end, 
became  the  real  centre  of  Greece,  both  in  her  strength  and  in  her  weakness ; 
a  brief  sketch  of  the  history,  showing  this  .  .         .  136-159 


xviii  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  VII 

ANCIENT  RELIGION:   THE  HELLENIC  QUEST  AFTER  TRUTH 

An  account  of  the  way  in  which  the  higher  spirits  among  the  Greeks 
effected  a  purification  of  religion ;  Socrates  steuiding  at  the  centre  of  this 
movement ;  a  vindication  of  his  pre-eminence  in  this  respect,  as  shown  by 
a  comparison  of  our  two  principal  witnesses,  Plato  and  Xenophon.  Some 
account  of  religion  as  understood  by  Plato,  and  a  briefer  reference  to 
Aristotle  and  to  the  great  thinkers  of  Greece  in  after  times      160-190 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ANCIENT  RELIGION:    ROME 

The  primitive  religion  of  Rome  marked  by  many  superstitions,  but 
swsuming  a  nobler  character  through  the  worship  of  "Jupiter  Best  and 
Greatest."  The  Romans  for  a  long  time  singularly  faithful  in  their 
religious  worship;  and  this  may  justly  be  held  a  cause  of  the  moderation 
and  sanity  which  they  showed  in  the  internal  affairs  of  their  city,  so  that 
they  became  continually  more  powerful  against  external  enemies.  But 
a^s  Rome  grew  in  power,  Roman  religion  decayed,  and  the  Roman  character 
deteriorated;  a  regeneration  of  the  nobler  Romans  (or  Italians),  such  as 
Virgil  and  Cicero,  took  place  through  Greek  philosophy,  but  did  not  reach 
to  the  lower  strata  of  society 191-215 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  FIRST  SEED  OF  A  PERFECT  FAITH: 
ABRAHAM  AND   MOSES 

The  question  treated,  whether  the  Old  Testament  is  subject  to  error 
in  its  ethics  and  in  its  miracvilous  history.  In  both  respects  error  is 
affirmed  to  exist  in  it;  the  crucial  point  as  regards  the  miracles  lies  in 
the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  which  professes  to  give  the  personal  evidence 
of  Moses,  but  which  on  examination  is  shown  to  have  had  its  origin  in  the 
reign  of  Josiah.  Yet  the  Old  Testament  history  has  much  and  deep 
truth;  and  the  great  originality  and  value  of  the  religion  of  Abraham 
is  pointed  out,  as  also  the  extraordinary  courage  by  which  Moses  carried 
that  religion  to  victory;  pressing  the  material  side  of  Abraham's  ideal, 
in  the  conquest  of  the  Canaanitic  races,  too  far  indeed,  but  also  giving  sound 
moral  precepts  to  the  race  of  Israel 216-244 

Appendix  to  Chapter  IX 

The  Name  "Jehovah" 245 


CONTENTS  xix 

CHAPTER  X 

ISRAEL'S   EARTHLY  IDEAL   ATTAINED:    DAVID 

The  gradual  process  of  conquest  by  the  race  of  Israel  within  the  boionds 
of  Canaan,  and  the  carrying  of  that  conquest  by  David  far  beyond  the 
bounds  of  Canaan.  The  less  worthy  side  of  the  ideal  which  Abraham  had 
conceived  is  thus  carried  to  its  greatest  height;  the  unity  of  God,  under 
the  name  of  Jehovah,  a  cardinal  principle  with  Samuel  and  David,  but 
the  character  of  God  in  many  ways  misconceived  by  them.  The  relation 
of  David  to  the  Psalms  is  also  touched  upon      .         .         .         246-264 

CHAPTER  XI 

THE   FALL   OF   THE   EARTHLY  IDEAL:    THE   RISE 
OF   PROPHECY:    ISAIAH 

The  reign  of  Solomon,  who  was  a  shrewd  and  powerful,  but  not  a  wise, 
king ;  his  despotism  the  real  cause  of  the  breaking  up,  after  his  death,  of 
the  tmity  of  Israel.  The  ten  tribes  (after  the  brea<;h)  retained  external 
power,  but  were  slowly  weakened  from  within,  and  their  great  prophets, 
Elijah  and  Elisha,  had  no  successors.  But  in  the  small  kingdom  of  Judah, 
under  the  descendants  of  David,  Isaiah  gave  expression  to  a  new  hope,  a 
heavenly  ideal,  for  Israel  and  for  mankind.  An  explanation  of  his  genuine 
prophecies 265-291 

CHAPTER  XII 

THE   HEAVENLY  IDEAL  IN   CONFLICT:    JEREMIAH 
AND   EZEKIEL 

The  sudden  retrogression  of  the  tribe  of  Judah  into  idolatry  in  the  reign 
of  Manasseh;  their  rescue  from  it,  by  ineans  not  altogether  legitimate, 
in  the  reign  of  Josiah;  the  relapse  into  idolatry  afterwards.  The  fall  of 
Nineveh;  the  exultation  of  the  Jews  at  this  event  speedily  shown  to  be 
premature,  when  Nebuchadnezzar,  king  of  Babylon,  came  and  besieged 
Jerusalem;  the  fall  and  rxiin  of  that  city.  The  great  prophets  of  this 
epoch,  Jeremiah  in  Jerusalem,  Ezekiel  in  Babylonia,  strong  in  their  re- 
proofs of  their  nation,  but  never  ceasing  to  hold  out  a  divine  hope  of 
restoration  in  the  future        .......         292-315 

CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  CULMINATION  OF  PROPHECY:  THE  PROPHET 
OF  THE  EXILE 

An  account  of  the  first  return  of  the  Jews  from  the  Babylonian  Cap- 
tivity, taken  from  the  last  twenty-seven  chapters  of  the  book  which  is 
known  as  the  book  of  Isaiah  (but  these  twenty-seven  chapters  were 
written  long  after  the  time  of  Isaiah,  and  their  author  is  unknown  to 
us) 316-334 


XX  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE   RESTORATION   OF  JERUSALEM:    THE   PSALMS: 
ZECHARIAH 

In  this  chapter  a  chronology  different  from  that  generally  accepted  is 
given:  at  the  beginning  of  the  chapter  both  the  ordinary  chronology, 
and  that  which  is  here  followed,  are  stated  in  a  brief  compendium.  The 
story  here  followed  runs  thus :  the  first  chapter  of  Ezra  tells  of  the  return 
under  Cyrus  (spoken  of  in  chapter  xin.  of  this  work):  the  history  after 
this  for  50  or  60  years  is  a  blank  (the  second  and  third  chapters  of  Ezra 
being  erroneous  history) :  but  the  Psalms  will  in  great  measure  fill  up  this 
blank  space.  The  book  of  Ezra,  from  chapter  iv.  6  onwards,  is  genuine 
history,  and  relates  to  the  reigns  of  Xerxes  (Ahasuerus),  Artaxerxes 
Longimanus,  Darius  Nothus,  and  Artaxerxes  Mnemon.  The  return  of 
Zerubbabel  was  in  the  reign  of  Darius  Nothus,  and  the  prophets  Haggai 
and  Zechariah  prophesied  at  that  time :  many  of  the  Psalms,  notably  the 
107th  and  118th,  are  probably  of  the  time  of  Zerubbabel.  The  book  of 
Nehemiah  is  also  genuine  history  ;  and  the  Antiquities  of  Josephus  and  the 
papyri  of  Elephantind  supply  interesting  elements  to  fill  up  the  narrative. 
This  reading  of  history  is  supported  by  argument.  At  the  close  of  the 
chapter  the  books  of  Job,  Ecclesiasticus,  Wisdom,  etc.,  are  mentioned 

335-367 

Appendix  I  to  Chapter  XIV 

The  true  character  of  the  chapters  Ezra  ii.  and  iii.  together  with  some 
other  remarks  bearing  on  the  date  of  Zerubbabel        .         .         367-385 

The  more  difficult  argxunents  which  support  the  view  taken  in  chapter 
xrv.  are  inserted  in  this  Appendix. 

Appendix  II  to  Chapter  XIV 

Concerning  the  Titles  to  the  Psalms. 

The  titles  are  not  to  be  regarded  as  historically  trustworthy ;  argu- 
ments in  support  of  this  view       ......         385-386 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   HEAVENLY   IDEAL   TAKES   TO   ITSELF 
EARTHLY   ARMOUR 

An  account  of  the  Maccabean  wars :  also  of  the  book  of  Daniel  (dated 
as  contemporary  with  Antiochus  Epiphanes),  The  history  is  briefly 
sketched  up  to  the  Christian  era,  and  some  other  literary  works  are 
mentioned 387-407 


CHAPTER   1 

THE   UNIVERSE   IN   RELATION   TO   MAN 

Human  history  is  a  brief  fragment.  Time  eternal,  as  it  must 
succeed  the  present  day,  so  must  have  preceded  it ;  space  in- 
finite hes  around  us.  Can  space  and  time  ever  be  without  material 
contents  ?  However  this  may  be,  it  is  hundreds  of  milUons  of 
years,  if  we  may  trust  the  astronomers  and  physicists,  that  the 
stars  of  heaven  have  been  gathering  splendour  and  pouring  out 
their  hght  into  the  regions  of  space  ;  and  even  if  we  take  the 
history  of  our  earth  alone,  geologists  will  certainly  not  be  content 
with  a  milhon  years  to  account  for  the  strata  which  must  have 
been  deposited  in  the  waters  of  the  ocean,  and  which  are  now 
raised  up  into  mountain  ranges.  What,  compared  to  these  vast 
reahties,  is  human  history  ?  It  is  but  six  or  eight  thousand  years 
of  the  past  that  are  illuminated  for  us  by  written  records,  for  the 
most  part  very  imperfectly  ;  and  it  is  one  of  the  smallest  and 
most  insignificant  of  the  orbs  of  space  that  has  been  the  scene 
of  aU  human  action,  from  first  to  last. 

It  is  true  that  there  is,  even  on  the  first  showing  of  the  matter, 
something  to  be  said  in  honour  of  historical  study,  when  compared 
with  the  science  of  the  external  universe.  In  human  historj'^  we 
find  beings  whom  we  may  love  ;  even  in  the  sorrows  and  trage- 
dies of  human  hfe  a  deep  interest  is  often  involved  ;  hope  is  caught 
and  cherished  in  our  hearts  from  the  hopes  of  the  human  beings 
who  have  preceded  us  ;  reverence  is  felt  for  brave  souls,  who  have 
acted  and  suffered  heroically.  These  are  sentiments  which  the 
astronomer,  the  ph^^sicist,  or  the  geologist  may  feel  as  a  man  ; 
but  they  are  not  written  for  him,  according  to  his  present  know- 
ledge at  all  events,  in  the  science  which  he  studies  ;  if  he  wishes 
to  feel  his  heart  warmed,  his  sympathies  strengthened,  he  will 
find  the  fuel  of  such  fire  in  the  pages  of  history,  but  scarcely  will 
he  find  it  in  the  sciences  of  external  observation  or  in  the  calcu- 
lations of  the  intellect. 

Yet,  when  we  have  said  all  that  we  can  in  favour  of  historical 
study,  a  question  remains  behind,  which  may  damp  our  ardour 


2  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN        [ch. 

again.  Is  not  the  race  of  man,  no  less  than  the  individual  man, 
transitory  ?  Is  there  not  this  permanent  cloud  hanging  over  us, 
that  we  must  all  disappear  into  nothingness,  first  each  one  of  us 
individually,  and  then  after  many  ages  the  entire  race  of  men  ? 
How  many  races  of  living  beings,  strong  in  their  own  day  and 
generation,  have  disappeared  from  the  surface  of  the  earth — 
the  ichthyosaurus,  the  mammoth,  the  moa  of  New  Zealand  — 
which  last,  even  two  centuries  ago,  is  said  to  have  been  a  still 
living  creature  !  Many,  many  other  less  notable  species  of  animals 
have  flourished  on  this  earth  for  ages,  but  have  now  departed, 
and  can  never  be  revived  again.  May  not  mankind  vanish,  even 
as  the  others  have  vanished  ?  and  we  may  remember  that  the 
eminent  physicist  Helmholtz  predicted  the  extinction  of  the  solar 
hght  and  heat,  without  which  earthly  Hfe  can  hardly  exist.  Can 
mankind  exist  for  ever  ? 

A  certain  answer  to  such  a  question  as  this  might  be  suppUed 
from  the  Christian  rehgion,  with  its  promise  of  a  new  heaven  and 
new  earth,  were  we  to  take  that  promise  literally  ;  but  in  any 
such  literal  acceptance  we  should  be  deserting  wholly  that  natural 
human  understanding  on  which  we  rely  for  all  our  ordinary 
actions  ;  and  it  will  not  be  history  in  that  case  which  will  be  our 
guide,  but  a  scheme  of  things  independent  of  history.  It  will 
be  the  task  of  the  present  work,  in  subsequent  chapters,  to  show 
that  the  Christian  i-eligion  is  really  the  solvent  of  the  historical 
problem,  elevating  history  so  as  to  make  it  the  more  inspired 
companion  of  physical  science  ;  but  not  the  Christian  religion  in 
its  literal  acceptation  ;  the  Christian  religion  interpreted  by  the 
light  of  the  experience  we  have  gathered  since  the  time  when 
that  religion  first  began,  nearly  nineteen  centuries  ago. 

Our  present  problem  is  to  find  a  scheme  of  thought  which 
shall  give  an  explanation,  not  quite  inadequate,  of  the  state  of 
things  in  which  we  live  ;  so  far,  at  least,  as  to  satisfy  our  con- 
science, and  not  to  clash  violently  with  our  understandings. 
The  physical  universe,  whatever  else  it  may  be,  is  a  cradle  in 
which  human  history  lies  ;  and  it  is  possible  that,  as  physical 
science  influences  and  colours  human  history,  so  likewise  the 
elements  of  human  history  may  be  able  to  impart  a  colour  and 
a  warmth,  a  sympathetic  emotion,  to  parts  of  the  physical  uni- 
verse where  at  present  we  do  not  suspect  the  presence  of  life  at 
all.  If  this  be  so,  human  history  will  indeed  be  a  talisman  of 
power.     Let  us  consider  the  nature  of  it  more  closely. 

That  wliich  first  strikes  the  inquirer,  when  he  pays  regard 


I]  THE   UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN  3 

to  those  purposes,  struggles  and  thoughts,  which  fill  the  history 
of  man,  is  the  exceeding  subtlety  of  the  field,  when  compared  with 
that  which  physical  science  tries  to  compass.  Physical  science, 
it  is  true,  has  its  subtle  methods,  among  which  the  theorems  of 
mathematics  are  preeminent;  but  no  mathematical  theorem 
presents  that  mixture  of  plain  direct  reasoning  with  elusive 
/  side-currents,  dimly  conjectured  and  uncertain,  which  is  the 
■  ordinary  staple  of  history.  Among  the  greatest  themes  of  his- 
tory are  the  characters  of  men  ;  and  if  the  characters  of  men 
are  often  a  puzzle  to  us  in  the  intercourse  of  common  everyday 
life,  how  much  more  must  they  be  so  when  our  whole  knowledge 
of  them  is  derived  from  the  writings  of  faUible,  often  prejudiced 
and  ignorant,  witnesses  !  Therefore,  in  spite  of  the  vastly  greater 
compass  of  physical  science  both  in  time  and  space,  history  pre- 
sents for  our  decision  more  doubtful,  more  difficult  problems, 
than  any  part  of  physical  science  does. 

But  the  next  thing  we  observe,  when  we  study  the  history 
of  man  (and  more  notably  at  the  present  day  than  ever  before) 
is  that  the  history  of  man  introduces  to  our  notice  a  principle 
of  government,  in  a  sense  in  which  physical  science  does  not. 
In  physical  science  we  have  interminghng  causes,  forces  which 
combine  in  different  proportions  and  produce  diversified  results  ; 
but  physical  science,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  excludes  the 
consideration  of  purposes,  aims  and  ends  ;  whereas  government 
is  essentially  concerned  with  purposes,  aims  and  ends. 

Looking  however  into  the  matter  more  closely,  we  observe 
that  no  sharp  severance  can  be  made  between  the  topics  of  phy- 
sical science  on  the  one  side,  and  the  topics  into  which  government 
enters  as  a  necessary  constituent  on  the  other  side.  The  physical 
side  of  fife  can  never  be  ignored  ;  and  hence  fiving  things  cannot 
be  excluded  from  physical  science  ;  yet  all  living  things  are 
organised  ;  and  organisation  impKes  government.  The  appor- 
tioning of  forces  towards  an  end  is  government,  and  the  appor- 
tioning of  forces  towards  an  end  is  seen  in  the  lily  and  the  oak-tree, 
in  a  way  in  which  it  is  not  seen  in  the  mountain  torrent  or  in  the 
movements  of  the  clouds  or  in  the  revolution  of  the  planets 
round  the  sun.  The  Hly  and  the  oak-tree  draw  nutriment  out  of 
the  air,  the  water,  and  the  earth  in  such  quantities  and  propor- 
tions as  will  best  nourish  the  lily  or  the  oak-tree  to  its  perfection  ; 
we  know  by  what  channels  this  is  done,  but  we  cannot  measure 
the  forces  employed  in  the  operation,  or  say  why  the  plant 
chooses  certain  elements  for  its  nurture  and  rejects  others.     We 

1—2 


4  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN        [ch. 

are  in  presence  of  something  of  the  same  mystery  which  we  find 
in  human  history  ;  Hfe,  wherever  it  be  found,  has  something  in 
it  which  we  cannot  reason  about  with  certainty. 

Life  is  mysterious,  because  of  the  incalculable  nature  of  that 
organised  energy  which  it  sets  into  action.  The  peculiarity  of 
organisation  is  this,  that  while  we  do  not  appear  to  create  force 
by  it,  we  do  multiply  very  greatly  the  effectiveness  of  force  ; 
we  increase  our  own  effective  power  ;  and  we  bring  to  light  forces 
of  which  otherwise  we  should  have  been  ignorant.  Looking  back 
through  the  records  of  history,  we  see  that  human  power  has 
increased  wonderfully  as  the  ages  have  gone  by,  and  that  the 
increase  has  taken  place  through  larger  and  more  thorough 
organisation.  It  was  a  wonderful  thing  for  the  Pharaohs  of  Egypt 
to  build  the  pyramids ;  but  how  much  more  wonderful  are  the 
feats  of  modern  engineers  !  The  piercing  of  mountains  by  tunnels, 
the  construction  of  railways  and  railway  engines,  steamships  and 
harbours,  are  deeds  which  far  surpass  anything  which  was  done 
four,  five,  or  six  thousand  years  ago.  The  Pharaohs  did  not 
more  surpass  the  builders  of  the  lake  dwellings  of  the  primitive 
ages,  than  they  have  been  surpassed  by  the  material  constructors 
of  the  present  day  ;  and  all  because  our  means  of  organisation  are 
greater  and  more  flexible.  Take  another  example.  In  no  period 
of  ancient  times  was  government  as  effective  as  in  the  period  of 
the  early  Roman  emperors,  down  to  Marcus  Aurelius  inclusive. 
Could  those  emperors  have  estabhshed  a  post  office  in  each  city 
of  their  dominions,  to  convey  letters  with  the  accuracy  with  which 
they  are  now  conveyed  in  Italy  and  France  and  Spain  ?  They 
certainly  could  not,  nor  did  any  one  in  those  days  dream  of  doing 
such  a  thing  ;  letters  were  sent  by  special  messengers,  known  to 
the  sender,  and  as  these  were  necessarily  few,  letterwriting  could 
not  be  a  general  practice.  Men  were  neither  so  peaceable,  nor  so 
enterprising,  nor  so  faithful,  seventeen  hundred  years  ago  as  they 
are  now  ;  and  therefore  organisation  is  far  more  powerful  at  the 
present  day  than  it  was  in  ancient  times  ;  and  the  result  is,  that 
the  race  of  man  has  increased  in  power  incalculabl3^ 

It  will  be  seen  then  that  human  history,  inferior  as  it  is  to 
physical  science  both  in  range  and  in  accuracy,  does  introduce 
to  our  notice  a  form  of  power  which  physical  science  hardly 
notices  at  all.  It  is  true  that  physical  science  cannot  help  men- 
tioning living  organisms  ;  but  writers  on  physical  science  never, 
as  far  as  I  know,  take  note  of  the  great  power  which  the  principle 
of  organisation  supphes. 


I]  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN  5 

But  having  said  this,  I  must  mention  an  objection  which  may 
not  improbably  be  made  to  this  exaltation  of  organising  power. 
It  may  be  said,  that  as  organisation  does  not  create  force,  but 
only  uses  force  more  effectively  than  the  crude  natural  man  can 
use  it,  the  effectiveness  of  organisation  is  necessarily  limited  by 
the  amount  of  force,  or  energy,  which  is  suppHed  to  it.  More- 
over, it  will  be  added,  since  the  earth  and  the  whole  solar  system 
are  continually  losing  energy  by  the  dissipation  of  heat  and  other 
forms  of  energy  into  the  surrounding  space,  there  will  come  a  time 
when  organisation  in  this  part  of  the  universe  will  cease,  because 
there  is  no  more  force  or  energy  for  it  to  work  up  into  new  forms 
of  effectiveness.  This  is  an  argument  which,  not  precisely  in 
these  words,  but  in  this  sense,  is  actually  used  at  the  present  day. 
It  is  an  argument  which,  for  its  vahdity,  depends  entirely  on 
'  the  assumption  that  the  amount  of  force,  or  energy,  which  awaits 
,  our  care,  our  inteUigence,  and  our  industry,  in  the  years  which 
^  are  to  come,  is  finite  and  not  infinite.  If  an  infinite  store  of 
energy  is  laid  up  in  the  unknown  storehouses  of  the  universe  ; 
if  access  to  those  storehouses  is  obtainable  by  us  ;  then  the  hving 
inhabitants  of  the  earth,  of  whom  man  is  the  head,  will  never 
want  material  on  which  to  operate,  will  never  want  the  means 
of  operating  ;  the  bankruptcy  with  which  we  are  threatened  will 
not  take  place.  If,  however,  proof  be  required  that  that  infinite 
store  exists,  such  proof  from  the  nature  of  the  case  cannot  be 
had  ;  a  store  whose  existence  can  be  proved  would  by  that  very 
fact  be  finite  and  not.infinite.  Proof,  then,  must  not  be  demanded  ; 
but  a  behef  may  be  felt  to  be  reasonable,  and  rightly  accepted, 
in  spite  of  the  absence  of  strict  proof  ;  and  the  question  is,  whether 
the  belief  that  man  has  an  infinite  support  behind  him  to  carry 
his  action  on  through  all  future  ages,  is  reasonable  or  not. 

It  ^vi\[  not  be  out  of  place  to  refer  here  to  the  opinion  of  a 
famous  philosopher,  who  will  not  be  accused  of  prejudice.  Her- 
bert Spencer,  is  not,  I  believe,  an  authority  on  the  details  of 
science  ;  and  he  is  certainly  not  an  authority  on  history.  But 
no  man  has  ever  looked  more  steadily  and  impartially  than  he 
on  the  whole  scope  of  science,  so  as  to  discern  the  philosophical 
elements  inherent  in  it.  He  was  the  first  of  all  men  to  discern 
the  immense  range  of  the  principle  of  evolution  ;  and  as  the 
counterpart  of  that  immense  range  in  the  results,  he  saw  that 
the  source  of  evolution  must  be  one.  Let  me  quote  the  remark- 
able words  in  which  he  enunciated  this  last  truth  ;  it  is  the 
closing  sentence  of  the  sixth  part  of  his  Principles  of  Sociology ; 


6  THE  UNIVERSE   IN  RELATION  TO  MAN        [ch. 

Amid  the  mysteries  which  become  the  more  mysterioiis  the  more  they 
are  thought  about,  there  will  remain  the  one  absolute  certainty,  that  he 
[i.e.  the  man  capable  of  discernment]  is  ever  in  presence  of  an  Infinite 
and  Eternal  Energy  from  which  all  things  proceed. 

The  form  of  the  concluding  phrase  must  be  noted  ;  Spencer 
does  not  say,  "  from  which  all  things  have  proceeded  "  ;  it  is  the 
present  and  ever  continuing  effluence  of  the  visible  from  the  in- 
visible of  which  he  speaks.  The  utterance  is  not  properly  a 
religious  one  ;  but  it  marks  with  precision  the  limit  at  which 
,  science  passes  over  into  religion  ;  and  religious  considerations  are, 
^  I  believe,  needed  for  its  full  acceptance.  But  even  without 
bringing  religious  considerations  to  bear,  so  important  is  the 
principle  of  the  unity  of  origin  of  all  existent  things,  that  the 
sentence  I  have  just  quoted  deserves  great  respect  on  scientific 
grounds  alone  ;  and  it  will  be  well  to  consider  in  the  first  place 
how  far  it  is  supported  by  the  obvious  primary  aspect  of  things, 
before  adding  those  elements  of  thought  and  feeling  through 
which  Spencer's  principle  becomes  truly  religious. 

We  notice,  that  at  the  birth  of  every  human  infant  something 
new  enters  the  world  of  our  knowledge,  which  had  not  been  there 
before  ;   and  it  is  difficult  not  to  extend  this  assertion  to  other 
new  bom  things  which  are  not  human.     There  is  a  new  centre  of 
^  energy  ;    the  baby  derives  large  portions  of  its  being  from  its 
/  father   and    mother,   but   its   individuality  it   does  not  derive 
/  from  its  father  or  its  mother.     It  is  a  new  person  in  the  world  ; 
and  so  mysterious  is  the  source  of  personality,  that  we  cannot 
refuse  to  contemplate  the  possibility  that  new  energy  may  enter 
the  world  through  this  avenue.     If  this  be  so,  the  invisible  rein- 
forces the  visible. 

There  is  a  further  series  of  facts,  which  in  some  degree  can 
hardly  be  denied  to  be  true,  but  which  for  their  full  verification 
must  probably  await  further  experience  ;  these,  if  finally  veri- 
'  fied,  would  greatly  support  the  view  that  new  energy  enters  the 
world  along  with  new  life.  It  can  hardly  be  denied  that  the 
fertility  of  the  earth  depends  in  no  inconsiderable  degree  on  the 
energy  and  skill  of  man.  Recent  discoveries  have  made  known 
the  fact,  that  large  portions  of  central  Asia,  which  are  now  barren 
and  waterless,  were  formerly  well  watered  and  populous.  Did 
the  desolation  which  has  overtaken  these  tracts  come  from  natural 
causes  alone,  and  was  it  incapable  of  being  averted  by  human 
effort  ?  is  it  now  incapable  of  being  remedied  ?  I  believe  that 
the  most  probable  answer  to  these  questions,  judging  both  by 


I]  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN  7 

what  we  know  of  the  wild  savagery  that  prevailed  in  central 
Asia  in  bygone  days  (of  which  Jingis  Khan  is  the  most  famous 
but  far  from  the  only  example),  and  also  by  what  has  been  done 
by  civihsed  men  during  recent  years  to  reclaim  deserts  in  various 
parts  of  the  world,  is  that  prudent  human  action  is  capable 
of  increasing  the  sum  of  life  on  the  earth,  as  certainly  perverse 
human  action  is  capable  of  diminishing  it.  If  further  experience 
shows  that  this  is  true  on  a  large  scale,  the  contention  that  there 
is  an  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy,  from  which  all  the  energy  of 
this  visible  world  has  proceeded  and  does  proceed,  will  be  felt 
at  any  rate  to  be  quite  consistent  with  our  natural  knowledge  ; 
and  life  will  be  seen  to  be  the  avenue  through  which  it  enters 
the  world. 

But  now  it  must  be  considered  in  what  way  rehgion,  as  we 
know  it  in  our  experience,  affects  the  question.  Herbert  Spencer 
spoke  of  the  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy  as  essentially  the  Un- 
known ;  and  unknown  it  is  through  any  of  our  sensuous  faculties. 
But  the  emotional  part  of  man  is  not  sensuous  ;  the  sympathy 
which  binds  human  beings  together  is  not  sensuous.  Will  these 
parts  of  our  nature  tell  us  anything  about  the  Infinite  and  Eternal 
Energy  ?  Let  us  bear  in  mind  how  closely  the  sympathetic  parts 
of  human  nature  are  allied  to  that  power  of  organisation,  which 
as  a  power  is  not  reckoned  very  highly  by  physical  science,  but 
which  history  reveals  to  us  as  truly  important  in  relation  to  man, 
and  which  gives  us  a  prospect  of  attainments  in  the  future  far 
beyond  any  which  have  been  reached  at  the  present  day.  If 
men  sympathise  with  each  other,  they  can  work  together,  and 
organisation  can  proceed  safely.  Sympathy  then  is  closely  re- 
lated to  the  most  characteristic  power  which  man  possesses,  to 
the  highest  ideal  at  which  he  can  aim. 

It  is  no  superficial  or  transient  need  of  human  nature  which 
bids  us  desire  an  orderly  life,  a  life  in  which  our  duties  are  com- 
mensurate with  our  faculties,  in  which  affection  is  predominant, 
in  which  our  present  labours  are  lightened  by  future  hopes. 
These  are  the  elements,  spiritual  and  not  material,  in  which 
human  power  centres.  But  in  order  to  show  how  these  may  be 
fostered,  how  sympathy  may  be  fostered  and  organisation  ex- 
tended, I  must  make  that  transit  into  true  rehgion  which  Herbert 
Spencer  stood  on  the  brink  of  but  did  not  actually  make. 

If  the  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy  be  a  Spirit,  full  of  all  that 
sympathetic  emotion  which  is  exhibited  by  the  best  persons  in 
their  highest  moments  (though  that  Spirit  is  too  mysterious  to 


8  THE  UNIVERSE   IN  RELATION  TO  MAN        [ch. 

be  called  definitely  a  person),  then  the  universe  is  worthily  ani- 
mated by  its  central  Power.  No  one  who  believes  this  will  think 
prayer  unnatural  ;  for  every  one  must  feel  that  his  own  character 
is  made  up  of  various  habits  of  action  and  strains  of  feeling,  of 
which  some  are  less  worthy  than  others,  and  some  need  repression, 
others  need  to  be  strengthened.  That  Infinite  Spirit  of  whom 
I  have  spoken  is  in  rehgion  named  God  ;  and  it  will  be  the  object 
of  the  present  treatise,  while  not  denying  some  intrinsic  merit 
to  human  nature,  to  show  that  the  animating  and  controlling 
power  of  God  is  a  necessity  for  mankind,  and  that  prayer  is  the 
natural  intercourse  between  man  and  God.  I  do  not  speak  from 
mere  theory  ;  had  I  not  been  saved  by  it  myself,  I  would  not  have 
recommended  it  to  others. 

We  are  saved  by  prayer  to  God  ;  but  yet  the  relation  in  which 
we  stand  to  man,  as  well  as  the  relation  in  which  we  stand  to  God, 
must  be  a  part  of  salvation  in  its  full  sense.  To  be  saved  in  the 
full  sense,  must  mean  that  we  are  capable  of  surviving  that 
seeming  collapse,  which  we  all  of  us  suffer  in  death  ;  and  if  we 
are  capable  of  surviving  it,  then  the  organisation  which  begins 
in  this  life  must  be  continued  into  a  future  Ufe,  and  for  all  eternity  ; 
and  this  means  that  we  have  eternal  relations  with  our  fellow  men. 

Government  of  the  spirit  of  man,  and  therewith  government 
of  this  earth,  which  is  the  abode  of  man  ;  government  by  divine 
inspiration  and  help,  leading  to  a  salutary  organisation,  and 
thereby  to  increased  life  and  happiness  ;  such  is  the  solution 
which  I  offer  for  the  problem  which  life  presents  to  us.  But  I 
add  this,  that  it  is  a  solution  which  will  be  found  unavailable 
unless  we  extend  our  views  towards  a  life  which  shall  belong  to 
us  after  this  life  in  the  flesh  has  passed  away  ;  for  that  alone 
will  give  us  a  perfect  organisation,  and  perfect  relations  with  our 
fellow  men.  And  I  may  be  permitted  to  add,  though  it  is  a  thesis 
the  proof  of  which  is  beyond  the  present  chapter,  that  in  Christ- 
ianity, when  the  right  distinctions  are  made,  when  we  see  rightly 
what  elements  are  temporary  and  what  permanent  in  that  entire 
system  which  we  name  Christianity,  lies  the  power  to  create 
those  eternal  relations  of  men  with  the  Divine  Being  and  with 
each  other  which  will  constitute  a  full  solution  of  the  problem 
of  life.  Not,  however,  until  I  come  to  deal  with  the  life  and  death 
of  Jesus  Christ,  can  I  clothe  this  whole  subject  with  those  sacred 
and  inviolable  emotions  which  are  to  us  the  witness  of  there 
being,  in  our  own  persons,  an  eternal  element. 

At  present  I  must  recede  from  the  topics  to  which  I  have 


I]  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN  9 

just  been  referring.  It  is  not  the  permanence  of  the  individual,  but 
the  permanence  of  terrestrial  life  and  specially  of  humanity,  with 
which  the  present  chapter  is  concerned  ;  and  there  is  a  difficulty 
in  the  way  of  our  beHeving  the  permanence  of  terrestrial  hfe, 
which  may  seem  formidable.  Against  ordinary  dangers  it  is  not 
hard  to  conceive  that  we  may  protect  ourselves  by  a  right  use  of 
the  resources  that  we  possess  ;  but  there  is  one  danger  against 
which  it  may  seem  that  we  are  quite  powerless.  The  future 
extinction  of  the  sun's  Hght  and  heat  was  predicted  by  Helmholtz, 
on  grounds  accepted  by  the  leading  physicists  and  astronomers  of 
the  world,  as  an  event  hkely  to  take  place  not  indeed  very  soon, 
but  stiU  within  twenty  milKon  years  from  the  present  time  ;  and 
though  twenty  million  years  is  long  as  compared  with  the  indi- 
vidual life  of  any  of  us,  it  is  nothing  compared  with  eternity. 
Twenty  milHon  years  will  come  to  an  end  as  surely  as  fifty  years 
wUl  come  to  an  end ;  if,  after  twenty  million  years,  all  Hfe  on  the 
earth  is  destroyed,  our  view  of  the  universe  is  not  essentially 
altered  from  what  it  would  be,  if  we  supposed  the  destruction 
about  to  take  place  within  fifty  years  from  to-day.  It  is  true 
that  we  may  faU  back  on  the  view  of  hteral  minded  Christians, 
and  suppose  that  a  new  heaven  and  new  earth  will  be  provided 
for  us  twenty  million  years  from  to-day  ;  but  such  an  interpre- 
tation of  the  well-known  passages  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments 
is  not  a  very  satisfactory  one  ;  and  the  want  of  reasonableness 
about  any  such  view  cannot  but  be  felt  as  very  damaging  to  it. 

It  is,  however,  well  known  that  the  recent  discovery  of  radium 
has  tended  very  considerably  to  modify  the  theory  of  Helmholtz 
in  the  eyes  of  all  scientific  thinkers.  But  before  saying  how 
and  to  what  extent  the  theory  of  Helmholtz  has  been  modified 
of  late,  it  will  be  well  for  me  to  give  some  brief  account  of  what 
the  theory  is  in  itself. 

The  theory  of  Helmholtz  is  an  expansion  of  that  earher  theory, 
the  nebular  hypothesis  ;  which,  first  conceived  by  Kant,  and 
strengthened  by  Herschel  and  Laplace,  was  always  received  with 
considerable  favour,  though  perhaps  not  with  absolute  acceptance, 
by  scientific  men.  Here  is  the  tale  of  it,  as  far  as  concerns  the 
solar  system. 

In  the  beginning  there  was  a  vast  nebula.  How  this  nebula 
came,  we  are  not  at  present  to  inquire  ;  but  however  it  came, 
it  gathered  towards  its  centre  and  began  to  revolve,  by  virtue  of 
the  Newtonian  law  of  attraction.  More  and  more,  as  the  ages 
rolled  on,  it  grew  in  coherence  ;  yet  certain  films,  at  successive 


10         THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN       [ch. 

intervals,  detached  themselves  from  the  main  body  of  the 
nebula  ;  and  these  films  probably  surrounded  the  main  nebula 
like  rings,  and  revolved  about  it,  as  the  rings  of  Saturn  do  about 
that  planet  now.  In  any  case,  whatever  the  exact  shape  of  these 
films,  they  gradually  grew  together  severally  into  their  densest 
portions,  until  each  film  became  a  globe  of  hot,  gaseous  or  molten, 
matter,  the  primitive  form  of  a  planet.  Of  these  planets  one, 
as  we  know,  has  in  its  coohng  down  become  the  abode  of  hving 
beings  ;  the  other  planets  have  also  cooled  down,  but  whether 
they  are  the  abodes  of  living  beings  is  not  certainly  known.  It 
is  a  natural,  but  not  absolutely  necessary,  part  of  the  theory, 
to  suppose  that  the  satellites  of  the  planets  were  formed  by  a 
similar  process  to  that  by  which  the  planets  themselves  were 
formed. 

All  these  planets  however  in  their  entirety  were  but  a  very 
small  fraction  indeed  of  the  nebula  ;  and  after  the  planetary 
films  had  been  detached,  the  mass  of  the  nebula  still  kept  retreat- 
ing inwards,  in  globular  form,  revolving  continually  about  a  cen- 
tral axis,  until  at  last  it  assumed  that  size  under  which  we  know 
it,  being  no  other  than  our  brilliant  luminary,  the  Sun. 

So  far,  so  good  ;  but  in  the  above  description  it  has  not  been 
explained  how  the  sun  has  come  to  be  so  brilliant  or  so  hot  as  it 
is  ;  or  why  the  planets  (seemingly)  were  once  brilliant  and  hot. 
Laplace  has  assumed  that  the  whole  nebula  was  from  the  first 
of  fiery  substance  ;  but  about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  Helmholtz  showed,  by  a  very  notable  train  of  reasoning, 
that  this  assumption  was  not  necessary.  It  was  the  compression, 
Helmholtz  said,  involved  in  the  contraction  of  so  vast  a  mass, 
which  had  engendered  the  solar  heat  and  light ;  for  it  must  be 
remembered  that  the  nebula  is  held  to  have  been  at  first  im- 
measurably larger  than  it  is  now.  The  sun,  Helmholtz  added,  is 
still  contracting  ;  the  contraction  produces  continually  a  vibra- 
tory movement  in  all  the  particles  of  the  sun  throughout  his 
whole  mass ;  in  this  vibratory  movement  heat  and  hght  consist  ; 
and  the  vibration  is  communicated  to  the  ether  which  surrounds 
the  sun,  and  is  conveyed  through  the  ether  to  distant  parts  of  the 
universe.  Nor  is  it  only  heat  and  light  that  are  thus  conveyed  ; 
electricity,  magnetism,  and  even  chemical  forces  are  wafted  on 
the  waves  of  the  ether,  ready  to  do  any  work  that  may  come  in 
their  way  ;  and  thus  for  instance  a  magnetic  storm  in  the  sun 
may  create  an  aurora  in  the  earth,  the  chemical  rays  from  the 
sun  affect  beneficially  the  foliage  of  plants,  and  the  hght  waves 


I]  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN  11 

from  the  sun  touch  our  eyes,  and  are  the  source  to  us  of  all  that 
knowledge  and  all  that  deUght  which  comes  to  us  from  our  faculty 
of  seeing. 

There  is  much  in  the  process  thus  indicated  which  goes  beyond 
our  present  powers  of  reasoning  ;  but  as  a  broad  conception  it 
is  intelligible  ;  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  explain  even  to  an  unlearned 
reader  the  most  saHent  points  of  the  causative  process  suggested. 
The  most  natural  question  for  any  reader  to  ask,  on  first  con- 
sidering the  theory,  is  whether  mere  compression  of  the  matter 
which  constitutes  the  sun  could  possibly  produce  all  that  amazing 
amount  of  heat  and  Hght  which  the  sun  pours  forth.  It  is  not 
easy  to  give  among  f  amihar  terrestrial  phenomena  an  instance  of 
gradual  compression  producing  heat ;  but  of  sudden  compression 
producing  heat  and  Ught  there  is  a  familiar  instance,  when  a 
horse's  iron  shoe  strikes  a  stone  pavement  and  eUcits  a  spark. 
What  really  happens  in  this  case  is  that  the  rapid  motion  of  the 
horse's  iron  shoe  is  stopped  by  the  stone  pavement ;  it  is  probably 
not  stopped  entirely  at  once,  for  a  dint  in  the  pavement  will 
testify  that  there  has  been  some  motion  of  matter  as  the  result 
of  the  stroke  of  the  horse's  foot ;  but  stopped  it  is  in  the  end. 
Then,  by  that  subtle  interchange  of  power  which  goes  on  through 
the  particles  of  all  existent  things,  the  plain  direct  motion  is  trans- 
muted into  that  other  kind  of  motion,  which  we  call  heat  and 
light ;  and  the  evidence  of  this  Hes  in  the  spark  which  is  elicited 
by  the  collision  of  the  iron  shoe  with  the  pavement. 

Now  very  much  in  the  same  manner,  according  to  Helmholtz 
(allowing  for  the  difference  between  a  sudden  stroke  and  a  con- 
stant pressure),  the  force  of  gravitation  acts  between  the  particles 
of  the  sun,  contracting  these  particles  into  a  narrower  compass  : 
so  it  does  now,  and  so  it  has  done  from  the  first  beginning  of  the 
solar  nebula.  The  internal  parts  of  the  sun  resist  and  hinder 
this  contraction,  and  thus  heat  is  evolved  ;  the  amount  of  heat 
being  measured  by  the  amount  of  motion  that  is  stopped  by  the 
resistance.  Roughly  speaking,  if  the  sun  contracts  a  mile  in  its 
diameter  every  eleven  years,  it  wdll  give  us  all  the  heat  that  we 
now  receive  from  it^.  How  imperceptible  such  a  contraction 
must  be,  will  be  appreciated  if  we  remember  that  a  mile  is  not 
much  more  than  a  millionth  part  of  the  sun's  diameter. 

We  see  then,  that  mathematical  calculation  does  not  forbid 
our  regarding  the  theory  of  Helmholtz  as  the  real  solution  of  the 

^  See,  for  the  exact  reckoning,  Sir  Robert  Ball's  book,  The  Earth's  Beginning, 
pp.  370-374. 


12  THE   UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN        [ch. 

problem  of  the  origin  of  the  sun  and  stars.  But  the  theory,  in 
its  full  compass,  is  as  yet  unverified.  It  may  be  asked,  what 
would  be  full  verification  of  it  ?  If  half  a  dozen  stars  went  out 
suddenly,  that  would  be  a  considerable  verification  ;  not  absolute 
even  then  ;  but  such  an  event  would  prove  that  it  was  quite 
possible  for  a  star  to  get  to  the  end  of  its  illuminating  power  ; 
and  the  explanation,  that  the  substance  of  the  star  had  been  so 
compressed  as  to  have  become  solid  and  to  have  lost  all  capabihty 
of  further  compression,  would  have  very  seriously  to  be  enter- 
tained ;  and  we  might  consequently  fear  the  same  fate  for  our 
sun  also.  But  this  very  formidable  piece  of  verification  has  not 
taken  place  so  far ;  and  we  may  without  over-presumption 
consider  what  objections  may  lie  in  the  way  of  the  theory, 
considered  as  the  sole  and  exclusive  account  of  the  matter. 

First,  then,  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  theory  of  Helmholtz 
makes  the  law  of  gravitation  the  primary  cause,  out  of  which  all 
other  known  physical  forces  proceed  ;  gravitation  causes  pressure, 
and  from  pressure  proceed  heat,  light,  electricity,  magnetism,  elas- 
ticity and  chemical  forces.  But  is  gravitation  entitled  to  this 
primary  position  among  physical  forces  ?  This  is  not  at  all  the 
conclusion  to  which  the  most  recent  science  pointed,  even  before 
the  discovery  of  radium.  Among  the  molecules  of  matter,  at 
those  infinitesimal  distances  where  electricity  and  radio-activity 
have  their  play,  gravitation  does  not  appear  to  work  at  all.  These 
considerations  are  not  unimportant  ;  it  might  however  be  said 
against  them  that  no  method  of  building  up  the  sun  and  stars  by 
means  of  electricity  or  by  the  other  forces  named  had  ever  been  sug- 
gested, whereas  by  gravitation  such  a  method  had  been  suggested. 

After  the  discovery  of  radium,  however,  this  answer  could  not 
be  so  confidently  made.  Not  only  does  radium  preserve  its 
effluent  energy  for  a  wonderfully  long  time,  which  in  itself  would 
tend  to  prolong  the  term  of  the  sun's  luminous  power,  if  sufficient 
amount  of  radium  and  kindred  substances  exist  in  the  sun  ;  but 
also  it  was  discovered  that  one  cause  of  this  prolongation  of  the 
active  energy  of  radium  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  atoms  of  it  were 
being  decomposed.  The  possibility  of  the  decomposition  of  an 
atom  had  before  been  denied  ;  but  if  it  be  possible,  must  we  not 
revise  our  opinion  as  to  the  amount  of  latent  energy  in  every  one 
of  the  orbs  of  heaven  ?  This  consideration  has  really  influenced 
physicists  in  their  views  as  to  the  durability  of  the  sun's  light 
and  heat  ;  and  it  certainly  has  some  force  ;  how  much,  is  not 
quite  easy  for  us  to  say  at  the  present  time. 


I]  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN  13 

I  confess,  that  it  is  in  another  direction  that  I  look  for  the 
full  truth  as  to  the  origin  of  the  self -glowing  luminaries  of  heaven. 
What  is  there  to  prevent  our  thinking  that  the  sun  and  the  stars 
are  the  results  of  organising  power,  of  the  power  of  hfe,  in  some 
respects  even  of  the  power  of  mind  ?  What  do  we  know  of  Hfe  ? 
We  know  it  as  it  exists  on  the  earth.  Even  on  the  earth  the 
forms  of  Ufe  are  very  diverse  and  susceptible  of  change  ;  and 
even  on  the  earth  the  spiritual  element  in  hfe  is  singularly  subtle, 
and  quite  beyond  sensuous  perception.  By  what  reasoning  is  it 
possible  to  justify  the  assumption  that  life  must  always  present 
itself  in  that  obvious  tangible  form  under  which  we  know  it  on 
earth  ;  or  rather,  under  which  we  know  some  of  its  constituent 
parts  ;  for  even  on  the  earth  there  are  some  elements  of  hfe  which 
are  neither  visible  nor  tangible  ?  If  there  be  any  truth  at  all  in 
human  immortahty,  it  would  certainly  not  appear  that  our  im- 
mortal part  is  visible  or  tangible  in  the  ordinary  sense.  Is  no 
allowance  to  be  made  for  possible  faculties  not  yet  attained  by 
man? 

It  was  from  a  sense  of  the  diversity  of  living  forms  that  the 
great  astronomer  Laplace,  writing  more  than  a  century  ago^, 
urged  the  probabihty  that  living  beings  exist  on  the  other  planets 
of  the  solar  system,  suited  in  each  case  to  the  temperature  of 
their  respective  abodes.  It  is  not  an  unreasonable  argument ; 
but  when  the  nature  and  power  of  organisation  are  considered, 
has  not  such  an  argument  enhanced  force  as  apphed  to  the  sun  ? 
To  organise,  is  to  arrange  the  powers  which  he  at  our  disposal 
in  such  a  way  that  they  shall  not  be  impeded  by  each  other's 
action,  but  have  their  fuU  effect.  Is  not  the  sun's  energy,  whether 
spiritual  or  non-spiritual  in  its  origin,  exceedingly  effective  ?  is 
it  not  much  more  effective  than  the  soUd  matter  which  forms  the 
mass  of  the  earth  ?  If  we  admit  the  thought  that  it  is  organised 
at  all,  is  it  not  much  better  organised  than  the  earth  is  ? 

The  solution  here  suggested  of  the  origin  of  the  solar  and 
stellar  fires  has  the  distinctive  feature  that  it  rests  on  mystery. 
It  answers  the  challenge  of  the  physicists,  "  From  whence  will 
you  get  the  new  energy  which  is  to  replace  that  which  is  dissi- 
pated into  the  regions  of  space  ?  "  not  by  bringing  forward  any  new 
tangible  store  of  energy,  but  by  saying  that  wherever  hfe  exists, 
the  process  of  organisation  which  is  inherent  in  Hfe  draws  energy 
out  of  an  unknown  and  mysterious  source  ;   and  that  the  higher 

^  Laplace,  Exposition  du  Systeme  du  Monde,  Liv.  5"",  c.  vi.     See  the  translation 
of  the  passage  in  Sir  David  Brewster's  More  Worlds  than  One,  chapter  xvi. 


14         THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN        [ch. 

the  organisation  is,  the  more  is  it  in  contact  with  this  mysterious 
source.  It  is  not  seen  how  the  new  energy  comes  ;  it  unites 
itself  with  the  known  forms  of  visible  energy,  but  adds  something 
to  them.  Let  any  one  who  denies  the  truth  of  this  explain,  if 
he  can,  so  simple  an  act  as  the  picking  up  of  a  pin  from  the  ground. 
There  are  plenty  of  known  forces,  physical  and  chemical,  concerned 
in  that  act ;  but  if  a  full  explanation  of  the  act  is  to  be  given, 
it  has  to  be  added,  over  and  above  all  the  affirmation  of  physical 
and  chemical  forces,  that  somebody  wanted  to  pick  up  the  pin. 

The  region  of  mystery  is  not  to  be  denied  ;  are  we  to  suppose 
that  mystery  attaches  to  the  destinies  of  man,  but  is  banished 
from  the  starry  heavens  ?  do  plain  mathematical  and  physical 
laws  explain  every  part  of  this  infinite  universe,  except  only  the 
little  corner  where  man  exists  ?  If  this  is  a  preposterous  supposi- 
tion, then  let  it  be  remembered  how  much  more  mysterious  life 
is  than  anything  else  known  on  earth.  Recognising  this,  we  shall 
feel  that  the  mystery  of  the  heavens  is  probably  also  connected 
with  life,  in  a  manner  beyond  our  present  comprehension. 

It  is  then  the  conclusion  of  this  whole  argument,  that  the 
sun  is  not,  as  far  as  we  know  at  present,  in  danger  of  dying  out ; 
the  earth  is  not  in  danger  of  losing  the  heat  and  light  which  we 
enjoy  to-day.  The  development  of  man,  then,  in  the  future 
ages  is  not  necessarily  for  a  finite  number  of  years  only,  after 
which  it  must  cease  ;  and  the  history  of  the  past  is  not  subject 
to  this  great  disparagement,  which  would  result  if  the  race  of 
men  were  liable  to  be  cut  short  by  inexorable  physical  laws,  and 
thenceforth  be  no  more  remembered  for  ever. 

It  is  the  supreme  interest  of  history  that  I  have  been  vindi- 
cating, and  on  this  ground,  that  all  the  history  of  the  past  is  the 
seed  of  an  infinite  development  in  the  future.  The  value  of  this 
will  be  felt  ;  though  attempts  to  foresee  the  future,  either  of  the 
race  or  of  the  individual,  with  precision,  are  not  likely  to  be  very 
successful. 

One  thing  more  I  must  say  with  respect  to  the  distinguished 
man  of  science  on  whom  in  the  main  I  have  been  commenting. 
Lamentably  poor  and  barren  as  we  must  think  the  starry  universe, 
if  the  theory  of  Helmholtz  is  the  full  truth  respecting  its  nature 
and  genesis  ;  little  though  we  can  esteem  the  amendment,  if  the 
only  relief  comes  through  the  decomposition  of  atoms  ;  this  is 
not  the  same  as  saying  that  the  theory  can  be  wholly  disregarded. 
Helmholtz  deals  with  real  forces,  and  traces  their  effect  on  the 
supposition  that  these  forces  act  singly  ;   and  there  may  be  cases 


I]  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN  15 

in  which  these  forces  do  act  singly,  or  at  any  rate  in  which  the 
force  of  gravitation  is  so  predominant,  that  other  forces  may  be 
neglected.  We  have  to  bear  this  in  mind,  though  we  must  cer- 
tainly hope,  and  may  I  think  beheve,  that  the  full  explanation 
of  the  starry  universe  is  much  more  mysterious,  and  much  more 
connected  with  the  things  which  we  most  love,  honour,  and  revere, 
than  it  would  be  if  the  theory  of  Helmholtz  were  the  full  truth. 

I  have  been  vindicating  the  honour  of  history,  but  I  have 
not  thus  far  been  narrating  history.  To  narrate  history  is 
however  the  purpose  of  my  book ;  and  with  what  epoch  of  time 
shall  I  begin  the  narration  ?  The  proper  answer,  it  would  seem, 
must  be  :  With  the  first  appearance  of  man  upon  the  surface 
of  the  earth.  That,  at  all  events,  is  the  beginning  of  human 
history  ;  but  there  are  considerations  which  will  lead  us  to  think 
that  the  time  before  the  beginning  of  human  history  ought  not 
^  to  be  quite  left  out  of  our  survey.  Biologists  tell  us,  and  I  quite 
/  agree  with  them,  that  the  human  race  is  the  offspring  of  an 
\  antecedent  race,  which  was  infra-human.  Biologists  do  not 
identify  that  antecedent  race  with  any  existing  species  of  ape  ; 
though  they  do  say  that  that  antecedent  race  was  the  common 
progenitor  both  of  mankind,  and  of  apes.  Taking  this  general 
view,  what  was  the  sign  of  the  first  arrival  of  mankind  on  this 
earthly  scene  ? 

I  cannot  myself  doubt,  that  the  acquisition  of  the  faculty  of 
speech  was  the  fact  which  distinguished  for  the  first  time  the  race 
of  man  from  the  lower  animals.  "  Articulate-speaking  men  " ; 
such  is  the  epithet  which  Homer  attaches  to  men,  to  signify  their 
distinctive  characteristic  ;  and  there  is  none  other  of  equal 
significance.  Speech  it  was  that  united  the  race  of  men  with 
a  power  to  which  no  other  species  has  approached  ;  speech 
enabled  cooperation  to  begin  in  those  works  by  which  fife  is 
defended  and  strengthened  ;  in  the  making  of  tools,  in  the  building 
of  huts,  in  the  kindling  of  fires.  Speech  found  a  natural  aid  in 
the  increased  flexibility  of  the  human  hand  ;  and  the  upright 
posture  which  man  assumed  in  walking  on  the  ground  gave  him 
a  larger  survey  of  the  things  around  him  ;  but  neither  of  these 
developments  of  the  human  body  had  effects  so  powerful  and  so 
penetrating  as  that  whereby  mental  communication  was  pro- 
moted, and  the  purposes  of  mankind  were  made  more  effective 
through  union.  Of  all  his  physical  powers,  speech  is  the  one 
which  man  could  least  afford  to  do  without ;  and  of  all  his  phy- 
sical powers,  speech  is  the  one  most  akin  to  the  mind. 


16  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN        [ch. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  a  complete  history  of  mankind  ought 
to  take  some  notice  of  that  momentous  series  of  events,  whereby 
the  nascent  upward  striving  creature,  that  had  the  germ  of  man 
in  him,  became  truly  and  fully  man.  We  have  indeed  no  written 
records  of  that  time,  and  it  is  impossible  that  we  should  have  had 
such  ;  the  conditions  forbid  it.  Nor  is  it  easy  to  see  how  any 
material  signs  could  have  reached  us,  showing  the  steps  by  which 
BO  great  an  advance  was  made  ;  at  all  events  we  have  no  such 
material  signs. 

But  is  analogy  of  no  value  as  a  guide  ?  Speech  is  a  faculty, 
but  we  must  also  assume  it  to  be  an  art,  won  by  trial,  by  effort, 
by  experiment,  in  slow  gradations  and  with  much  patience. 
Along  with  the  growth  of  this  art  many  other  things  must  have 
grown  ;  the  brain  of  man  must  have  gathered  complexity,  his 
tongue  and  hps  a  finer  tissue  of  nerve  fibre,  besides  the  alteration 
in  stature  and  hand-structure,  already  spoken  of.  Is  there  any- 
thing else  we  can  discern  as  practically  necessary,  if  such  a  period 
of  change  was  to  result  in  practical  success  ?  Friendly  feeUngs 
must  have  prevailed  more  extensively  than  in  previous  ages  ; 
for  the  practice  of  speech  must  for  a  long  time  have  implied 
friendly  relations  between  those  who  thus  sought  to  communicate 
ideas  with  each  other  ;  the  suspicion  which  enemies  entertain 
of  each  other  would  in  early  days  debar  all  attempt  at  trying  to 
speak  to  an  enemy.  Thus  a  more  stable  social  system  would 
rise  along  with  speech.  At  the  same  time  that  famous  principle, 
"  natural  selection  "  or  the  "  survival  of  the  fittest  "  would  show 
itself  ;  for  on  the  whole  and  in  the  long  run  those  who  had  made 
any  advance  towards  speech  would  have  the  superiority  over 
those  who  had  not  ;  those  incapable  of  speech  would  be  driven 
into  remoter  and  wilder  places,  and  would  remain  in  the  animal 
state. 

A  point  to  be  carefully  remembered  is,  that  the  art  of  speech 
could  not  have  arisen  through  any  deliberate  attempt  to  learn 
it  ;  the  value  of  articulation  would  for  a  long  time  be  experienced 
in  single  instances,  and  would  slowly  fit  itself  on  to  that  vocalisation 
which  had  been  long  known  ;  for  animals  can  express  by  cries 
their  feelings,  and  to  some  slight  extent  ideas  also.  In  the  first 
learning  of  tlie  art  of  speech  by  the  human  race  there  would  be 
no  such  stimulus  as  the  young  child  is  conscious  of  at  the  present 
day,  when  it  hears  its  elders  all  around  it  uttering  sounds  which 
it  tries  to  imitate  ;  the  stimulus  in  that  primaival  age  would  come 
from  the  direct   sense  that  it  was  to  the  interest  of  the  man 


I]  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN  17 

himself  to  frame  the  sound  which  had  some  material  signification, 
because  if  he  did  frame  it,  some  other  man  would  catch  his 
meaning  and  be  able  to  help  him.  Thus  it  would  be  the  most 
vigorous  who  would  learn  the  art  of  speech,  as  distinguished 
from  their  less  enterprising  fellows  ;  and  the  learning,  as  I  have 
said,  would  be  instinctive  and  answering  to  the  immediate  oc- 
casion, not  resulting  from  the  conscious  knowledge  that  there  was 
an  art  to  be  learned. 

I  have  been  giving  an  account  which  rests  entirely  on  ana- 
logy, and  on  what  must  be  presumed  from  the  nature  of  the  case, 
not  in  any  degree  on  specific  evidence  ;  this  is  what  we  are 
obKged  to  do  in  respect  of  aU  terrestrial  events  which  took  place 
before  that  comparatively  recent  period  when  the  art  of  writing 
was  invented.  Geology,  for  example,  could  not  stir  a  single 
step  without  the  assumption  that  the  strata  exposed  on  mountain 
sides  and  in  railway  cuttings  were  deposited  according  to  the 
analogy  of  the  earthy  particles  which  are  deposited  at  the  present 
day  in  the  seas  that  wash  the  coasts  of  continents  and  islands. 

If  then  analogy  and  the  intrinsic  nature  of  the  case  are  our 
only  guides  in  regard  to  the  primaeval  period  with  which  I  am 
now  dealing  ;  if,  up  to  a  certain  point  and  with  proper  Hmita- 
tions,  they  are  fairly  dependable  guides  ;  is  there  anything  that 
we  can  infer  from  them  as  to  the  religious,  the  divine  aspect  of 
human  evolution  at  this  its  incipient  stage  ?  I  spoke,  some 
pages  back,  of  the  strength  which  comes  to  men  through  prayer  ; 
is  there  any  reason  why  these  incipient  men,  these  men  still  in 
the  stage  of  being  formed  into  men,  should  not  have  prayed  to 
an  unknown  Power?  Possibly  they  may  have  prayed  super- 
stitiously,  as  many  men  since  have  done,  without  absolutely 
frustrating  the  intrinsic  value  of  the  act  ;  they  may  have  held 
that  an  unknown  power  resided  in  trees,  in  stones,  in  the  sun  or 
in  the  starry  heavens.  Prayer  mingled  with  errors  may  still  be 
a  source  of  strength,  although  not  of  unmingled  strength  ;  and 
prayer  without  words  is  not  necessarily  injured  by  the  absence  of 
words,  if  the  need  of  aid  and  the  desire  for  aid  be  felt  in  the 
spirit  ;  it  is  no  unnatural  belief  that  the  human  race  arose  out 
of  its  animal  surroundings  by  divine  help.  The  divine  help 
would  promote  especially  those  sentiments  of  peaceful  friendship 
and  alliance  which  were  so  important  in  the  first  beginning  of 
articulate  communication  of  ideas  ;  a  stabiHty  would  be  felt  in 
the  status  of  man,  greater  than  that  which  had  belonged  to  the 
animals  ;     even  if   quarrels   between   men  occurred   afterwards, 

M.  D.A.  2 


18  THE   UNIVERSE   IN  RELATION  TO  MAN        [ch. 

this  stability,  though  in  some  degree  imperilled,  would  not  be 
lost.  It  is  not  easy,  judging  from  what  we  know  of  religion  in 
human  history,  to  think  that  it  was  altogether  absent  as  a  cause 
in  the  first  beginnings  of  man  ;  and  the  nature  of  its  causative 
action  would  be  the  strengthening  of  the  human  heart  in  that 
most  critical  epoch,  when  the  new  tie  constituted  by  language 
was  being  formed  between  man  and  man. 

If  the  above  remarks  are  justly  reasoned  out,  the  very  begin- 
ning of  human  history  was  founded  on  a  manifestation  of  the 
divine  power,  spiritual  in  its  essential  nature,  but  extending  in 
its  effects  into  the  material  sphere.  Let  me  assume  this  to  be 
true  ;  is  it  possible  to  refrain  from  casting  a  glance  on  that 
immensely  long  series  of  ages,  during  which  living  organisms 
existed  on  the  earth's  surface  or  in  the  ocean  depths,  but  man 
had  not  yet  appeared  ?  Can  we  think  of  the  animal  life  which 
existed  before  man  as  altogether  without  kinship  to  man  ?  We 
cannot,  if  there  be  any  truth  in  the  evolutionary  view  as  applied 
to  the  human  species.  If  the  animal  life  existent  before  human 
life  appeared  had  a  certain  kinship  with  human  life,  and  was 
itself  strugghng  upwards,  and  was  on  the  way  to  a  higher  de- 
velopment ;  can  we  deny  that  the  word  "  history  "  has  a  real 
meaning  in  reference  to  this  hfe,  which  was  not  yet  endowed 
with  the  full  human  dignity  ?  It  appears  to  be  a  just  inference 
that  we  are  here  still  partly  in  the  province  of  history,  and  not 
of  mere  physical  science. 

But  in  dealing  with  the  life  which  existed  on  the  earth  before 
man  appeared,  we  find  ourselves  at  once  in  the  middle  of  all 
those  theories  which  have  sprung  from  the  famous  work  of 
Charles  Darwin,  The  Origin  of  Species,  first  published  shortly 
after  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  If  in  some  respects 
the  biological  theories  to  which  I  refer  appear  to  me  defective, 
their  extraordinary  compass,  and  the  illuminating  power  which 
they  have  had  on  all  human  thought  since  that  date,  must  still 
be  acknowledged  ;  and  it  will  be  best  briefly  to  describe  these 
theories  as  they  have  generally  been  held,  before  endeavouring 
to  indicate  where  the  insertion  of  spiritual  causes  appears  neces- 
sary for  their  full  and  reasonable  validity. 

It  is  a  familiar  fact  that  children  have  a  general  resemblance 
to  their  parents,  while  yet  no  child  was  ever  in  all  points  abso- 
lutely like  father  or  mother.  There  is  variation  ;  and  if  we 
suppose  variations  to  accumulate  through  a  long  series  of  genera- 
tions, the  child  may  in  the  end  become  very  unlike  its  remote 


I]  THE   UNIVERSE   IN   RELATION   TO   MAN  19 

ancestor.  So  it  is  with  all  creatures  ;  the  progeny  is  similar  to, 
and  yet  differs  from,  both  its  parents.  Even  when  we  come  to 
those  creatures  which  do  not  enjoy  the  blessing  of  two  parents, 
which  propagate  by  one  part  simply  separating  off  from  another 
part,  it  is  certain  that  a  general  similarity  still  holds  between 
parent  and  offspring  ;  and  that  there  is  difference  between  parent 
and  offspring  is  also  not  doubtful,  though  it  would  be  too  much 
to  say  that  it  is  always  obvious  at  a  glance,  especially  when  we 
come  to  such  tiny  creatures  as  the  amoeba ;  but  then  an  ordinary 
person  may  think  two  sheep  precisely  similar,  which  to  the 
shepherd  are  distinguished  by  a  hundred  different  traits.  So  it 
is  with  plants  ;  every  plant,  whether  it  propagates  by  seed  or 
by  suckers  or  in  any  other  way,  produces  a  plant  Uke  itself,  and 
yet  not  entirely  Hke.  Variation,  in  the  midst  of  a  general  like- 
ness, is  always  taking  place  in  the  realm  of  life. 

Can  we  put  any  limits  on  the  degree  of  such  variation  ? 
No  doubt,  in  finite  time,  the  variation  must  have  some  limits. 
But  the  earth,  to  judge  by  the  deposits  of  geological  strata,  has 
lasted  an  exceedingly  long  time  ;  our  limits  may  be  wide  ;  the 
variations  of  living  organisms  may  have  been,  are  almost  certain 
to  have  been,  far  greater  than  that  which  has  been  known  in 
recorded  experience.  Is  it  possible  that  variation  can  have 
acted,  during  hundreds  of  thousands,  perhaps  millions  of  years, 
so  effectively,  that  out  of  one  original  stock,  diverging  in  many 
directions,  all  the  animals  of  feline  kind  may  have  sprung  ; 
animals  so  diverse  as  the  lion,  tiger,  leopard,  and  the  common 
cat  ?  Is  it  possible  that  all  dogs  and  foxes  and  wolves  may  have 
sprung  from  a  single  stock  of  wild  wolves  ?  To  take  a  wider 
range,  is  it  possible  that  all  birds  may  have  sprung  from  a  wingless 
set  of  creatures,  possibly  from  the  same  wingless  set  of  creatures  ; 
that  all  animals  which  suckle  their  young  have  sprung  from  a 
more  primitive  set  of  animals  which  did  not  suckle  their  young  ? 
Or — to  take  wider  range  still — that  all  vertebrate  creatures  have 
had  an  ancestry  that  was  invertebrate  ?  If  this  should  have 
happened,  then  variation  has  been  indeed  an  important  factor 
in  the  history  of  terrestrial  life. 

Various  thinkers  in  the  earlier  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
approached  or  even  reached  the  opinion  that  living  organisms 
had  arrived  at  their  present  forms  by  a  slow  process  of  develop- 
ment, after  the  manner  just  indicated.  Lamarck  is  the  most 
famous  of  these  ;  and  the  philosophical  force  of  his  view  must 
not  be  underrated.     I  will  quote  the  brief  description  of  it  from 

2—2 


20  THE   UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN        [ch. 

Merz's  History  of  European  Thought  in  the  Nineteenth  Century^ 
vol.  II.  p.  314  : 

The  idea  is  worked  out  in  the  Philosophte  Zoologique,  that  if  we  com- 
mence the  study  of  Uving  creatures  from  below,  and  from  the  side  of 
vegetable  life,  we  are  inevitably  led  to  the  conviction  that  the  surrounding 
conditions  and  influences,  the  environment,  are  gradually  and  slowly 
modifying  the  elementary  organisms,  and  through  habit  and  inheritance 
developing  the  higher  ones,  endowing  them  with  more  specialised  organs 
fiind  more  complex  powers  and  activities. 

Still,  the  view  thus  enunciated  failed  to  obtain  general  accept- 
ance, mainly  from  the  want  of  any  observed  instance  of  varia- 
tion actually  taking  place  under  our  eyes.  But  shortly  after 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  Charles  Darwin  brought 
before  the  notice  of  naturahsts  a  variation  frequently  occurring, 
not  of  the  largest  kind,  but  considerable  and  permanent  enough 
to  deserve  being  taken  as  evidence  of  what  might  possibly  happen 
on  a  much  larger  scale.  This  was  the  variation  of  animals  and 
plants  under  human  control.  Horses,  cows,  sheep,  pigeons  in 
the  animal  world,  numerous  flowers  and  fruits  in  the  world  of 
plants,  have  actually  been  changed  in  size  and  in  the  character 
of  their  respective  parts  through  a  process  governed  by  the  human 
will.  It  would  seem  at  first  sight  that  this  must  imply  a  know- 
ledge on  our  part  of  the  causes  of  such  variation,  and  a  capability 
of  wielding  such  causes.  This  however  is  not  exactly  the  case  ; 
the  actual  causes  which  begin  to  change  an  organism  in  any 
direction  are  exceedingly  subtle,  and  can  hardly  be  said  to  be 
known  at  all ;  the  human  will  effects  change  in  the  character 
of  the  animals  and  plants  subject  to  it,  not  by  originating  varia- 
tions, but  by  choosing,  when  variations  have  somehow  come 
into  being,  which  shall  surv^ive  and  which  shall  not  survive. 
One  variation  may  be  an  improvement  (from  the  human  point 
of  view),  another  a  deterioration  ;  man  allows  the  improved 
animal  or  plant  to  produce  progeny,  and  forbids  this  to  tliose 
which  have  deteriorated.  The  progeny  resembles  the  parent  ; 
and  thus  mankind,  without  actually  dominating,  guides  nature. 
The  improved  progeny  alone  survives.  To  the  process  thus 
described  Darwin  gave  the  title  of  Artificial  Selection. 

Now  it  struck  Darwin  that  all  through  the  world  of  living 
things  there  is  going  on  a  process  which  resembles  this  artificial 
selection,  and  which,  if  variations  are  once  supposed  to  be  going 
on,  would  settle  which  variation  was  to  survive  and  wliich  was 
to  perish.     One  very  well  known  instance  of  this  process  is  the 


I]  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN  21 

disappearance  of  the  North  American  Indians  before  the  white 
races  ;  a  disappearance  not  absolutely  complete  at  the  present 
day,  but  complete  over  the  main  part  of  the  area  over  which 
the  wild  copper-coloured  tribes  once  roamed.  The  stronger  race 
has  prevailed  over  the  weaker  race  ;  and  there  is  everywhere 
this  tendency,  not  only  among  men  but  among  all  animals,  and 
also  among  plants.  Quite  apart  from  any  deliberate  direction  or 
purpose  known  to  us,  the  stronger  organisms  (or  at  least  the 
organisms  which  are  best  adapted  to  their  surroundings)  tend  to 
survive,  and  the  weaker  dwindle  and  decrease  in  numbers.  If 
then  there  is  continual  variation  going  on  in  the  forms  and  the 
structure  of  all  Hving  creatures  inhabiting  the  earth,  the  prin- 
ciple just  described,  which  Darwin  called  Natural  Selection,  will 
determine  which  creatures  shall  survive  and  which  shall  perish. 

If  artificial  selection,  acting  on  those  continual  variations 
which  arise  in  the  form  and  structure  of  living  creatures,  is  able 
to  perpetuate  these  spontaneously  arising  differences,  so  that 
after  a  long  course  of  human  supervision  and  management  such 
different  forms  as  the  drayhorse  and  the  racehorse,  the  small 
wiry  shaggy  Highland  cattle  and  the  ponderous  shorthorn,  the 
slim  greyhound  and  the  sturdy  mastiff,  will  come  into  existence, 
the  differing  pairs  having  in  each  case  come  from  a  common 
stock,  may  not  the  same  sort  of  differentiation  be  produced 
by  natural  selection ;  and  as  natural  selection  has  had  more 
than  a  thousand  times  the  length  of  time  to  operate  in,  as  com- 
pared with  artificial  selection,  may  not  the  results  have  been 
more  than  a  thousand  times  as  great  ? 

Such  was  the  question  which  Darwin  asked,  and  answered 
in  the  affirmative  ;  and  naturalists  at  once  felt  that  a  new  cause 
had  been  discovered,  which  might  perhaps  explain  the  reason 
why  hving  creatures  all  over  the  earth's  surface  have  arrived 
at  the  characteristics  which  they  respectively  present.  Moreover, 
when  once  it  was  felt  that  a  soHd  ground  had  been  reached,  on 
which  the  theory  of  a  development  of  differing  types  growing 
out  of  the  same  stock  could  rest,  it  was  also  felt  by  naturalists 
that  the  aspect  of  living  organisms,  with  their  large  similarities 
and  differentiations  within  differentiations,  exactly  corresponded 
to  what  we  should  have,  if  the  theory  of  development  be  true  ; 
and  a  final  confirmation  of  the  theory  lay  in  the  observed  fact, 
that  creatures  so  different  as  a  man  and  a  rabbit,  in  the  course 
of  their  formation  before  birth,  are  for  a  certain  period  indistin- 
guishable from   one   another  ;    the   differences   originate   as   the 


22  THE   UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN       [ch. 

growth  proceeds.  It  is  natural  to  think  that  each  individual 
does  to  a  certain  extent  recapitulate  the  history  of  his  race  ; 
and  if  so,  human  beings  and  rabbits,  notwithstanding  the  immense 
difference  that  lies  between  them  now,  have  sprung  from  stocks 
which,  long  ages  ago,  were  identical. 

One  difficulty,  indeed,  lay  in  the  way  of  the  Darwinian  theory. 
Though,  when  a  particular  species  begins  to  separate  into  stronger 
and  weaker  forms,  there  will  always  be  a  tendency  towards  the 
disappearance  of  the  weaker  forms,  while  the  stronger  survive  ; 
yet  if  the  weaker  specimens  vanish  entirely,  and  the  stronger 
alone  remain,  there  will  be  no  separation  of  one  species  into 
two  ;  all  that  will  have  happened  will  be  that  the  species  has 
grown  stronger.  It  is  only  if  some  of  the  weaker  forms  of  the 
species  remain,  as  well  as  the  stronger,  that  any  explanation  of 
the  division  of  one  species  into  two  is  possible  by  means  of  the 
Darwinian  theory  ;  and  this  accordingly  is  what  we  must  sup- 
pose to  have  happened  in  a  countless  number  of  cases.  It  is 
quite  conceivable  that  this  was  so  ;  but  then  the  question  arises, 
how  can  it  have  come  to  pass  that  the  difference  between  the 
stronger  and  weaker  forms  was  not  swamped  by  interbreeding, 
which  would  have  made  them  all  one  species  again  ? 

The  difficulty  just  noticed  admits  of  a  variety  of  solutions, 
which  are  by  no  means  inconsistent  with  one  another,  and  have 
no  doubt  acted  concurrently  ;  it  is  not  possible  in  the  present 
state  of  knowledge  to  determine  the  relative  value  of  solutions, 
or  in  other  words  the  extent  to  which  each  cause  has  operated. 
Darwin  laid  the  greatest  stress  on  the  separation  in  space  as  the 
principal  cause  which  would  prevent  the  intercrossing  of  the 
stronger  and  weaker  branches  of  a  divided  species  ;  and  he 
justly  remarked  on  the  great  influence  which  geological  changes 
would  have  in  promoting  this  separation.  But  he  instanced  also 
other  possible  causes  ;  "I  can  bring  a  considerable  catalogue  of 
facts,"  he  wrote,  "showing  that  within  the  same  area,  varieties 
of  the  same  animal  can  long  remain  distinct,  from  haunting 
different  stations,  from  breeding  at  slightly  different  seasons,  or 
from  varieties  of  the  same  kind  preferring  to  pair  together ^" 
Of  these  causes,  the  last  is  specially  noticeable,  as  bringing 
mental  disposition  and  will  into  the  matter  ;  and  those  who  ob- 
serve how  powerful  a  very  slight  difference  in  external  form  may 
be  in  creating  dislike  between  two  races  (as  for  instance  between 

*  Origin  of  Species,  p.  103  of  Ist  edition  ;  p.  126  of  cxlition  of  HtOO  (with  very 
slight  variation). 


I]  THE   UNIVERSE   IN   RELATION  TO   MAN  23 

the  white  man  and  the  negro  at  the  present  day)  wiU  be  of  opinion 
that  this  has  been  one  of  the  strongest  causes  in  confirming  a 
separation  that  has  once  begun  between  the  stronger  and  weaker 
branches  in  any  species.  It  is  a  cause  that  will  be  equally  effective 
in  the  ocean  and  on  land  ;  whereas  the  mere  physical  separation 
cannot  be  as  effective  in  the  ocean  as  on  the  land.  For  the  land 
has  been  perpetually  broken  up  in  a  way  to  make  intercommuni- 
cation diflScult ;  the  ocean  is  in  the  main  continuous  (for  inland 
seas,  even  the  Caspian,  are  but  insignificant  exceptions) ;  and  we 
have  no  reason  to  think  that  the  case  was  ever  otherwise.  I  believe 
however  that  great  ocean  depths  do  act  as  causes  of  severance. 
An  additional  possible  cause  of  permanent  differences  of  structure 
was  suggested  by  Romanes,  namely  a  tendency  to  barrenness  in 
the  intercourse  between  the  two  separating  branches  of  a  species. 

In  whatever  proportion  the  above  causes  may  have  acted, 
they  do  collectively  constitute  a  full  answer  to  the  difficulty 
just  noticed  in  the  Darwinian  theory  ;  and  in  confirmation  of 
the  behef  that  such  causes  do  act,  it  may  be  added  that  the 
existing  varieties  of  the  dog  can  hardly  have  always  owed  their 
diversity  to  a  deliberate  intention  of  men  that  they  should  be  kept 
separate  (though  this  cause  has  in  some  degree  operated).  Hence 
the  theory  of  Darwin  (suggested  simultaneously  and  independ- 
ently by  Wallace,  though  not  with  so  much  fuUness  of  illustration 
as  Darwin  brought  forward)  takes  rank  now  as  an  established 
scientific  truth  ;  although  important  instances  of  structural 
changes  in  any  species  have  never  been  observed  in  the  actual 
course  of  their  making. 

Yet,  accepting  the  general  hypothesis  of  evolution,  as  apphed 
to  the  origin  of  hving  organisms  ;  accepting  too  the  importance 
of  the  principle  of  natural  selection,  which  in  certain  of  its  aspects 
is  a  matter  of  ordinary  experience  ;  are  we  entitled  to  say  that 
the  whole  theory  of  the  origin  of  terrestrial  fife  has  been  made 
plain  to  us  thereby  ?  So  much  as  this  Darwin  himself  did  not 
affirm  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  recognised  in  explicit  terms  the  in- 
adequacy of  natural  selection  to  explain  every  part  of  the  process 
of  evolution. 

"  Natxiral  Selection,"  he  wrote,  "  depends  on  the  survival  under  various 
complex  circumstances  of  the  best-fitted  individuals,  but  has  no  rela- 
tion whatever  to  the  primary  cause  of  any  modification  of  structure." 
Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication,  eh.  xxiii.  (vol.  ii.  p.  272  of  1st 
edition). 

It  is  obvious,  of  course,  that  natural  selection  cannot  begin 


24  THE  UNIVERSE   IN   RELATION  TO  MAN        [ch. 

to  operate  until  the  modification  of  structure  which  is  to  be 
selected  as  dominant  in  the  future  has  already  come  into  exist- 
ence. How,  then,  are  we  to  arrive  at  a  knowledge  of  the  primary 
causes  of  modification  ?  To  this  difficult  question  biologists 
have  naturally  been  slow  to  give  an  answer.  No  one  can  find 
fault  with  their  caution  ;  but  unfortunately  they  have  too  often 
treated  the  question  as  a  negUgible  one,  which  is  quite  a  different 
matter.  An  especial  importance  belongs  to  the  question  of 
"  the  primary  cause  of  any  modification  of  structure  "  (I  quote 
Darwin's  phrase)  ;  and  for  this  reason,  that  it  is  a  question  which 
brings  before  us  the  whole  being  of  any  living  creature,  not 
merely  the  visible  organism,  but  that  which  underlies  the  visible 
organism,  the  motives  and  needs  of  the  creature.  It  will  scarcely 
be  denied  that  the  most  primitive  creatures  have  needs,  and 
have  motives.  Mr  Headley,  in  his  interesting  work  Life  and 
Evolution  (p.  175),  teUs  us  how  an  amceba  (an  animalcule  con- 
sisting of  only  a  single  cell)  rejected  a  morsel  of  flint  and 
ate  a  diatom  (a  very  small  single-cell  plant),  thereby  showing 
clearly  a  perceptive  preference.  The  amceba  had  a  need,  and 
had  a  motive  ;  and  if  we  go  higher  in  the  scale  of  creatures  we 
shall  find  more  complex  needs,  and  higher  motives.  If  we  are 
to  inquire  into  the  primary  causes  of  modification  of  structure, 
we  can  hardly  make  a  greater  mistake  than  by  neglecting  the 
finest  and  subtlest  elements  of  that  being  which  is  so  intimately 
connected  with  the  structure,  which  expresses  itself  through  the 
structure.  It  may  be  difficult  to  apprehend  motives,  still  more 
to  apprehend  the  workings  of  the  animal  mind  through  a  long 
continuance  of  time  ;  but  just  as  we  should  make  a  great  mistake, 
in  contemplating  the  works  of  man,  if  we  ignored  the  labour  and 
the  pain,  the  thoughts  and  the  hopes,  by  means  of  which  these 
works  came  into  existence,  so  we  shall  make  a  great  mistake,  in 
contemplating  the  visible  structures  in  which  life  has  enshrined 
itself,  if  we  try  to  solve  the  question  of  the  original  formation  of 
those  structures  without  paying  regard  to  the  deepest  character- 
istic of  life,  those  feelings  and  purposes  which  collectively  we 
name  the  soul. 

It  will  not  be  expected  that,  in  the  few  pages  which  are  at 
my  command,  I  shall  do  more  than  touch  on  the  way  in  which 
the  mind  and  purpose  of  any  creature  may  be  conceived  to 
have  operated  towards  a  change  of  its  external  structure  ;  but 
a  few  instances  may  be  given.  The  first  shall  be  from  a  quarter 
where  perhaps  it  would  not  be  expected  that  any  instance  would 


I]  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN  25 

be  found — from  the  history  of  plants.  It  wiU  of  course  be  under- 
stood that,  in  using  the  word  history,  I  have  no  thought  of  direct 
evidence  in  my  mind  ;  we  have  to  be  guided  by  inferences  ;  and 
it  may  be  useful  to  remark  how  often,  in  everyday  experience, 
we  are  accustomed  to  say  that  we  see  something  when  we  are 
reaUy  inferring  something.  For  instance,  in  reading  a  friend's 
hastily  written  letter,  we  shall  often  be  compelled  to  infer  that  a 
certain  set  of  strokes  means  a  word  to  which  it  has  no  natural 
resemblance.  • 

To  come  to  my  instance  in  plant-history  ;  it  is  generally  con- 
ceded that  in  order  of  time,  water-plants  preceded  land-plants  ; 
this  is  probable  both  from  the  shape  of  the  earth,  which  must  have 
been  an  originally  Hquid  mass  before  it  was  soUdified,  and  also 
the  structural  signs  point  to  this  order  of  development.  It  was 
when  land  first  emerged  from  the  waiters  of  the  primaeval  ocean 
that  land-plants  began  to  be ;  and  how  ?  By  the  invention  (if 
I  may  so  call  it)  of  a  root.  That  plant  was  indeed  a  great  inventor 
which  first  struck  a  root  into  the  ground  !  In  the  remote  ages 
of  which  I  am  speaking,  some  sea-plant  (which  had  previously 
derived  its  nurture  only  from  waves  and  air  and  sunlight)  was  left 
by  the  tide  just  below  the  highest  high-water  mark  ;  the  water  it 
received  in  this  way  was  not  adequate  to  its  needs  ;  it  thrust 
out  a  fine  filament  into  the  ground,  just  as  heretofore  it  had 
thrust  out  filaments  into  the  sea  ;  and  behold,  there  was  water 
underneath  !  That  fine  filament  was  the  first  root ;  it  was 
evoked  by  the  need  of  the  sea-plant ;  the  sea-plant  had  a  motive 
in  sending  it  out.  The  habit  of  root-making  spread  among  plants  ; 
the  moist  ground  near  the  estuaries  was  soon  covered  with  vegeta- 
tion, and  presently  the  drier  land  remote  from  the  ocean  was 
also  covered,  as  plants  learned  to  thrust  in  their  roots  deeper 
and  deeper.  What  an  accession  of  strength  came  therefrom  ! 
The  solid  earth  in  its  depths  proved  to  have  treasures  of  nourish- 
ment far  beyond  what  the  waves  could  bring  ;  for  though  the 
first  land-plants,  mosses  and  ferns,  were  not  greatly  superior  to 
the  seaweed,  yet  presently  the  great  forest  trees  began  to  grow, 
sending  their  tons  of  timber  high  up  into  the  air  (hundreds  of 
feet  in  the  case  of  the  American  sequoia)  ;  and  what  comparison 
can  the  limp  seaweed  hold  with  such  a  display  of  strength  as 
this  ? 

Land-animals  were  in  the  end  fully  as  much  superior  to  the 
denizens  of  the  sea  as  land-plants  are  to  water-plants  ;  but  it  is  not 
so  easy  to  trace   their  development.      The   first  land-animals. 


26  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN       [ch. 

the  reptiles,  do  not  appear  to  be  greatly  superior  to  the  fishes. 
But  when  warm-blooded  creatures  came  to  the  front  in  their 
two  main  divisions,  birds  with  their  power  of  flight,  and  mammalia 
bringing  forth  their  young  ahve  and  fostering  them  with  a  new 
affection,  then  the  power  and  range  of  animal  life  rose  very 
greatly  ;  but  by  what  steps  the  reptile  won  development  into 
these  two  higher  forms  it  is  not  easy  for  us  to  imagine.  More 
simple  were  two  great  advances  made  by  animal  Hfe  while  yet 
under  the  waters  of  the,  ocean  ;  the  winning  of  special  senses,  of 
which  sight  was  the  most  remarkable  ;  and  the  sheltering  of  the 
most  delicate  part  of  the  nervous  system  by  the  formation  of  a 
spine.  These  were  not  aggressive  advances  ;  they  injured  none  ; 
and  they  are  of  a  kind  peculiarly  marked  by  receptivity.  Not 
action,  but  patience,  must  have  been  the  most  prominent  neces- 
sity while  the  changes  were  being  matured  ;  and  the  patience 
must  have  been  deliberate.  The  first  beginnings  of  sight  lay  in 
the  greater  sensitiveness  of  a  certain  portion  of  the  skin  to  the 
waves  of  the  heavenly  ether  ;  this  feeling  must  have  been  pleasur- 
able in  itself,  before  it  was  known  to  be  the  method  by  which 
a  world  can  be  revealed  to  us.  Receptivity  is  the  quality  indi- 
cated by  the  sense  of  sight,  as  by  the  other  senses  ;  and  though 
it  would  be  an  error  to  suppose  that  this  receptivity  was  not 
mingled  with  action,  there  must  have  been  occasions  when 
receptivity  alone  was  in  play,  while  the  creature  was  winning 
the  faculty  of  sight.  We  call  sight  a  faculty  ;  but  evidently 
seeing  was  at  first  (like  speech)  an  art,  won  with  labour,  inspired 
by  hope.  Purpose  there  must  have  been  in  it,  though  purpose  of 
a  much  more  gentle  and  limited  character  than  what  we  generaUy 
call  by  that  name;  no  creature  ever  thought,  "I  will  learn  to 
see,"  any  more  than  any  man  ever  said  to  himself,  "  I  will 
learn  to  speak."  These  primitive  powers  are  learned,  but  not 
consciously  learned  ;  the  purpose  of  the  learner  is  confined  to 
very  small  elements  indeed,  which  only  become  great  by  accumu- 
lation, and  only  after  a  lapse  of  time  far  exceeding  the  life  of  a 
single  individual. 

So,  likewise,  the  processes  by  which  vertebrate  creatures  arose 
out  of  the  invertebrate  must  have  been  very  gentle  and  slow  ; 
very  small,  scarcely  perceptible,  purposes  must  have  been  the 
animating  cause  of  the  change. 

Of  developments  in  structure  of  more  doubtful  value,  such 
as  the  retractile  claw  of  the  feline  genus,  I  need  not  perhaps 
speak  here. 


I]  THE  UNIVERSE  IN  RELATION  TO  MAN  27 

Purpose  we  must  conclude  there  is  in  development,  in  the 
sense  explained  above  ;  but  are  we  to  acknowledge  a  divine 
purpose  in  the  whole  series  of  growing  Hfe  ?  It  will  be  pertinent, 
in  relation  to  this  question,  to  quote  some  expressions  of  Charles 
Darwin  himself,  who,  though  not  feeling  himself  able  to  acknow- 
ledge distinctly  the  being  of  God,  yet  was  incapable  of  refusing 
to  express  what  he  felt  to  be  a  genuine  instinct.  He  wrote  to 
I   Professor  W.  Graham  : 

j  You  have  expressed  my  inward  conviction  .  . .  that  the  universe  is  not 

,    the  result  of  chance.     Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin,  vol.  i.  p.  316. 

^         Again,  he  wrote  to  Lord  Farrer  : 

]         If  we  consider  the  whole  universe,  the  mind  refuses  to  look  at  it  as  the 

\  outcome  of  chance,  that  is,  without  design  and  purpose.     The  whole 

:  question  seems  to  me  insoluble,  for  I  cannot  put  much  or  any  faith  in  the 

•  so-called  intuitions  of  the  hxmaan  mind.     More  Letters,  vol,  i.  p.  395. 

No  one  ought  to  call  that  question  easy,  which  Darwin  called 
insoluble.  Nor  have  intuitions,  unconfirmed  by  experience, 
any  value.  Still,  there  are  two  purposes  which  we  may  fairly 
attribute  to  the  Divine  Will,  and  which  will  indicate  in  some 
measure  how  the  Divine  Will  may  have  operated  in  bringing  Ufe 
on  the  earth  to  its  present  state  of  growth  ;  first,  the  purpose 
of  strengthening  all  faculties  which  may  promote  hving  energy 
in  the  whole  of  creation  ;  secondly,  the  purpose  of  uniting  the 
children  of  life,  so  that  they  may  mutually  help  one  another,  and 
if  possible  have  conscious  affection  for  one  another.  Religious 
experience  does,  I  think,  confirm  the  reality  of  these  divine 
purposes. 


CHAPTER   II 

ANCIENT   RELIGION  :     BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA 

In  the  foregoing  chapter,  I  spoke  of  the  relation  of  man  to 
the  universe,  and  of  the  belief,  which  we  are  at  liberty  to  enter- 
tain, that  divine  and  spiritual  action  have  place  in  other  parts 
of  the  universe,  besides  the  earth  on  which  we  live  ;  and  of  the 
reasons  why  we  are  at  hberty  to  entertain  this  behef.  Moreover 
I  said  that  the  same  philosophy,  which  teaches  us  that  man  has 
kinship  with  all  other  terrestrial  hfe,  leads  us  to  beheve  that 
the  divine  action  has  place  in  terrestrial  life  other  than  human 
life  ;  and  I  endeavoured  faintly  to  indicate  of  what  nature  this 
divine  action  must  be,  in  beings  outside  man.  But  it  is  of  course 
man  in  whom  our  rehgious  inquiries  centre  ;  and  the  beginning 
of  man  dates  from  the  time  when  articulate  speech  was  first 
fashioned  into  a  real  art,  a  successful  faculty.  Along  with 
speech,  the  flexible  human  hand  and  the  upright  human  posture 
came  into  being,  and  were  causes  of  advance.  We  know  that 
during  all  these  early  periods,  advance  was  being  made,  but  how 
it  was  made  we  do  not  know.  The  particulars  of  the  advance 
we  do  however  to  some  extent  know.  Man  discovered  how  to 
kindle  fire  ;  he  leamt  to  make  flint  hatchets  ;  he  built  houses 
and  villages  ;  he  tamed  horses,  and  subjugated  other  animals, 
partly  to  help  him  in  his  labours,  partly  to  be  used  for  food. 
Metals  were  discovered  and  wrought  into  tools  and  weapons. 
He  snared  and  hunted  animals,  and  used  their  skins  as  clothes. 
The  art  of  agriculture  slowly  began.  Men  formed  communities  ; 
and  ranks,  oflQces,  and  specific  duties  were  assigned  to  different 
individuals.     How  greatly  did  man  soar  above  the  animals  now  ! 

But  of  these  ancient  days  we  have  no  record.  We  may 
conjecture  the  historical  causes  through  which  progress  was 
made  ;  but  conjecture  it  is,  not  evidence.  Doubtless  there  were 
heroes  then,  wise  thinkers,  keen  observers,  tender  self-sacrificing 
women,  as  millennium  after  millennium  passed  by,  and  human 


CH.n]  ANCIENT  RELIGION:  BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA  29 

worth  increased.  But  neither  heroes  nor  sages,  nor  women 
worthiest  of  love,  could  in  those  days  hand  down  any  memorial 
of  themselves  to  posterity  ;  for  even  if  there  were  poets  among 
them,  as  doubtless  there  came  to  be  in  the  processes  of  time, 
these  poets  were  ever  Uable  to  be  thrust  out  of  memory  by  the 
inflowing  and  accumulating  interests  of  the  age  that  succeeded 
them,  before  which  the  remoter  events  of  the  past  became  pale 
and  dim.  A  blurred  memory  was  preserved  for  a  time,  but 
inevitably  vanished  at  last. 

But  the  time  came  when  this  defect  was,  in  great  measure 
at  any  rate,  to  be  remedied. 

On  a  piece  of  mammoth  tusk,  preserved  from  a  period  long 
antecedent  to  all  written  or  remembered  history,  there  still  exists 
the  earhest  known  work  of  artistic  representation.  There, 
rudely  engraved  on  the  tusk,  is  the  picture  of  the  mammoth 
himself.  Doubtless  the  work  was  done  with  some  metaUic 
instrument ;  and  doubtless  the  carver  worked  it,  not  only  for 
the  delectation  of  himself,  but  for  his  fellows  ;  and  the  design 
of  it  was  to  preserve,  clear  and  distinct,  the  impression  which 
the  mighty  beast  had  made  on  those  who  had  seen  him  in  the 
flesh.  In  that  design  lay  more  than  the  beginning  of  the  arts 
of  sculpture  and  painting  ;  there  lay  in  it  the  beginning  of  the 
art  of  writing. 

As  it  is  intelligent  speech  which  distinguishes  man  from  the 
lower  animals,  so  it  is  the  art  of  writing  which  decisively  dis- 
tinguishes civiHsed  man  from  his  predecessors,  even  though  many 
of  those  predecessors  were  above  the  mere  savage.  After  speech, 
writing  is  the  greatest  invention  in  human  history,  the  invention 
which  has  raised  man  most.  It  would  be  grossly  to  underrate 
its  value  were  we  to  say  that  it  has  multiplied  the  powers  of 
man  a  thousandfold.  Not  only  has  the  art  of  writing  increased 
the  efficiency  of  human  action  by  making  it  possible  to  communi- 
cate thought  from'  a  distance,  but  also  (and  this  was  a  still  greater 
benefit)  it  for  the  first  time  shed  illumination  on  the  ages  of  the 
past  ;  experience  was  thus  handed  down  from  age  to  age.  No 
more  need  vahant  deeds  and  wise  thoughts  be  forgotten  ;  some 
portion  of  them,  and  a  continually  increasing  portion,  was  per- 
petuated in  durable  records.  So,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  will  it  be  for 
ever  ;  though  we  know  not  how  far  the  art  of  writing  may  be 
transcendentalised  as  time  goes  on,  or  how  far  memory  may  be 
enlarged  and  strengthened  as  we  obtain  fuller  access  to  the  heart 
of  all  reahty. 


30  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

We  know  something  of  the  art  of  writing  in  its  earlier  stages. 
It  is  not  like  the  art  of  speech,  the  beginnings  of  which  we  may  im- 
perfectly imagine,  but  cannot  know.  Here  we  have  some  actual 
evidence  ;  not  enough  for  a  full  explanation  of  the  details  of  the 
manner  in  which  it  arose  ;  but  enough  to  give  us  a  fair  notion. 
The  earliest  kno\vTi  types  of  writing,  the  hieroglyphs  of  Egypt,  are 
sculptures,  just  like  the  carving  on  the  mammoth  tusk  ;  but  with 
a  difference.  The  graven  picture  of  the  mammoth  stood  for 
nothing  but  a  mammoth  ;  but  the  hieroglyphic  sculpture  stood 
for  something  beyond  that  which  is  immediately  represented. 
The  sculptured  figure  is  no  longer  valued  for  its  accuracy  as  a 
representation  ;  it  is  valued  because,  in  connexion  with  other 
figures,  it  represents  a  complex  train  of  ideas,  of  which  the  greater 
part  were  not  actually  represented,  but  were  conveyed  by  natural 
association  to  the  mind  of  the  beholder.  This,  in  fact,  was 
exactly  what  speech  had  done  in  its  appeal  to  the  sense  of  hearing  ; 
the  articulated  sounds  called  up  trains  of  ideas  ;  and  long  custom 
made  the  association  easy  and  effortless.  The  art  of  writing  is 
simply  the  transference  of  a  symbol  which  appeals  to  the  eye  to 
a  symbol  which  appeals  to  the  ear.  Starting  as  a  branch  of 
pictorial  art,  it  became  swayed  and  bent  by  a  purpose  remote 
from  the  pictorial  art,  the  purpose  of  making  speech  visible  ; 
and  the  reason  why  it  was  desired  to  make  speech  visible  was 
because  impressions  made  on  the  sense  of  hearing  could  not  be 
preserved,  whereas  impressions  made  on  the  sense  of  sight  could 
be  preserved.  Thus,  while  writing  began  with  being  a  set  of 
pictures,  those  pictures  were  for  human  convenience  so  trans- 
muted, that  at  last  they  became  simply  representative  of  certain 
sounds,  the  sounds  used  in  human  speech.  This,  though  a  develop- 
ment, was  not  an  ordinary  development  ;  for  under  it,  the  pic- 
torial art  does  not  simply  expand,  but  it  is  made  subservient  to 
a  new  office  altogether.  Beginning  with  a  simple  appeal  to  the 
sense  of  sight,  it  ends  with  being  an  appeal,  through  association, 
to  the  sense  of  hearing.  The  mammoth  carved  on  the  tusk 
brought  the  actual  mammoth  into  the  memory  or  imagination  of 
the  beholder  :  the  word  "  mammoth  "  as  written-  has  no  force 
to  do  this  ;  but  the  written  word  "  mammoth  "  brings  the  sound 
of  the  spoken  word  "  mammoth  "  before  the  mind  of  the  reader, 
and  the  spoken  word  brings  the  idea  of  the  mammoth  with  it. 
Even  now,  I  believe  that  no  person,  however  apt  a  reader,  ever 
passes  at  once  from  the  sight  of  the  written  word  to  the  thought 
of  the  thing  signified  by  it,  without  the  intervening  memory  of 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  31 

the  sound  of  the  spoken  word.  That  intervening  memory  may 
be  very  slight,  but  I  believe  that  it  is  always  a  part  of  the  mental 
process  when  there  is  real  understanding  of  what  is  written. 

How  this  most  curious  transmutation  took  place,  a  trans- 
mutation not  at  all  primarily  designed,  exceedingly  difficult,  and 
only  accomplished  at  last  because  the  need  of  it  was  so  great, 
cannot  be  investigated  here.  But  it  is  of  interest  to  have  before 
our  minds  the  countries  in  which  the  earliest  specimens  of  writing 
are  found ;  and  these  are  Egypt  and  Babylonia.  In  both  of  these 
countries  the  earliest  writing  has  still  the  pictorial  character 
which  reminds  us  of  its  origin,  being  what  is  called  hieroglyphic  ; 
Egypt  has  hieroglyphs  more  abundantly  than  Babylonia,  but  this 
is  merely  because  the  dry  air  of  Egypt  has  preserved  them  better. 
We  cannot  trace  the  art  further  back  than  the  hieroglyphs  of 
Egypt  and  Babylonia  ;  but  if  we  were  asked  to  conjecture  the 
place  of  its  absolute  origin,  the  choice  must  lie  between  these 
two  countries.  If  the  thought  came  before  us  that  possibly 
it  originated  in  China,  we  should  have  to  reflect  that  there  are 
no  such  signs  of  a  primitive  hieroglyphic  origin  in  China  as  there 
are  in  Egypt  and  Babylonia  ;  and  moreover  there  is  reason  to 
believe  that  the  Chinese  in  their  first  beginnings  came  from 
Central  Asia,  which  was  then  very  much  more  fertile  than  it  is 
now.  The  Chinese  would  then  learn  the  art  in  the  west,  and 
would  carry  it  with  them  to  the  east.  Then,  as  communication 
between  east  and  west  became  more  difficult,  the  Chinese  re- 
mained stationary  in  the  art  as  they  had  learned  it ;  they  had 
not  quite  the  fiery  progressive  genius  of  the  western  nations. 

The  progress  of  writing  lay  through  a  stage  in  which  a  separate 
sign  was  given  to  every  word.  That  stage  we  still  find  in  China 
and  Japan,  but  nowhere  in  the  west  ;  though  in  the  west  we  find 
this  approximation  to  it  that,  in  some  of  the  ancient  Sumerian 
languages  which  exist  in  cuneiform  script  in  Babylonia  and  else- 
where, we  find  more  than  six  hundred  separate  signs,  some  of 
them  plainly  pictorial.  But  the  number  of  these  signs  was  con- 
tinually being  reduced  in  the  west,  the  pictorial  element  slowly 
vanishing,  and  comparatively  few  signs  being  found  sufficient  to 
represent  all  the  necessary  sounds  of  a  language  ;  until  (probably 
through  the  enterprising  Phoenicians)  an  alphabet  of  between 
twenty  and  thirty  letters  was  found  sufficient  to  express  to  the 
eye  any  spoken  word.  But  China  had  stopped  short  long  before 
this  stage  was  reached,  the  Chinese  written  language  still  requiring 
thirty  thousand  signs  to  express  all  its  words  ;    a  result  which  is 


32  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

hardly  conceivable,  if  full  and  free  communication  had  existed 
continuously  between  China  and  Western  Asia.  Hence  it  is 
probable,  as  I  said  just  now,  that  in  primaeval  days  a  degree  of 
communication  existed  between  the  extreme  east  and  the  extreme 
west  of  Asia,  which  at  a  later  time  was  broken  oflf ;  whether 
through  any  physical  change  or  through  racial  hostility,  is  un- 
known to  us. 

Egypt  and  Babylonia  are  the  countries  in  which  the  early 
development  of  writing  is  most  distinctly  visible  to  us  ;  and 
from  their  records  we  know  that  they  were  great  and  important 
countries  from  every  point  of  view.  More  than  that,  they  were 
distinctly  rehgious  countries.  For  more  than  four  millenniums 
before  the  Christian  era  have  we  some  knowledge  of  their  history  ; 
and  from  the  earUest  times  religion  is  inwrought  into  its  texture 
with  an  assurance  and  a  constancy  which  we  should  look  for  in 
vain  in  the  histories  of  to-day.  It  is  true  that  their  reUgion 
has  frequently  been  called  "  false  "  ;  polytheistic  and  idolatrous 
it  certainly  was,  with  few  and  doubtful  exceptions.  But  the 
^  presence  of  error,  in  these  large  and  mysterious  subjects,  must 
not  be  taken  as  proving  that  the  whole  is  valueless.  Who  is 
there  that  will  refuse  to  acknowledge  the  subhmity  of  the  feeling 
shown  in  that  sentence  which  was  inscribed  (as  Plutarch  tells 
us)  on  the  temple  of  the  veiled  Isis,  at  Sais  in  Egypt  : 

I  am  all  that  was,  and  that  is,  and  that  shall  be  ;  and  no  mortal  has 
yet  lifted  up  miy  veil. 

In  what  century  of  Egyptian  history  these  words  were  com- 
posed is  not  known  to  us  ;  but  the  sentiment  which  they  breathe 
is  more  hke  the  earlier  than  the  later  records  ;  they  tell  of  the 
uplifted  heart,  though  not  of  the  heart  which  prays  ;  yet  that 
these  ancient  people  did  pray,  we  know,  and  as  much  in  the 
early  as  in  the  late  times.  Though  we  have  not  the  evidence 
before  us  which  alone  could  enable  us  to  trace  causes  accu- 
rately, we  shall  be  disposed  to  believe  that  the  Babylonians  and 
Egyptians  of  very  ancient  times  derived  strength  from  their 
religion,  with  whatever  errors  it  may  have  been  associated  ;  and 
that  strength  would  aid  in  the  discovery  of  methods  by  which 
thought  could  be  made  visible  to  the  sight  and  perpetuated,  or 
in  other  words  the  invention  of  writing. 

Having  said  this,  it  is  necessary  to  add  some  remarks  as  to 
the  conditions  which  must  have  prevailed  while  the  invention 
was  in  the  process  of  making.  It  is  involved  in  the  nature  of 
the  case,  that  during  both  these  processes,  the  learning  to  speak 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  33 

and  the  learning  to  write,  a  spirit  of  mutual  friendliness  must 
have   prevailed    among    those    who    were    elaborating    the    art. 
Mutual  hostility  would  have  destroyed  the  desire  of  intercommu- 
nication, and  would  have  greatly  impeded  the  attention  which 
was  necessary  for  bringing  the  art  to  perfection.     Yet  it  is  also 
true  that  the  earhest  instances  of  the  art  of  writing  are  generally 
the  celebration  of  some  victory  in  war.     But  we  must  distinguish 
between  the  invention  of  the  art,  and  the  use  which  was  made 
of  it  after  it  was  invented.     When  it  was  once  invented,  the 
most  powerful  persons  would  be  those  who  would  use  it  most ;  and 
the  most  powerful  persons  in  those  days  would  be  the  greatest 
warriors.     This  is  why  the  art  of  writing  does  not  appear  to  us 
an  instance  of  the  value  of  a  peaceful  temper,  while  yet  in  reaUty 
it  is  so  ;  and  for  the  same  reason  it  is  not  to  us  an  instance  of  the 
value  of  rehgion,  while  yet  we  cannot  but  beheve  that  it  is  so. 
The  great  kings  who  perpetuated  the  memory  of  their  victories  in 
sculptures  or  in  hieroglyphics,  and  who  celebrated  at  the  same  time 
the  deity  by  whom  they  believed  themselves  to  have  been  favoured, 
were  not  hypocrites  ;  and  there  was  even  something  of  humihty 
in  their  acknowledging  a  greater  power  than  their  own,  to  whom 
they  owed  allegiance.     But  such  humihty  is  quite  compatible      V 
with  a  great  deal  of  pride  ;    and  as  time  went  on,  the  fixity  of 
(  rehgious  ceremonial  became  a  corrupting  force,  which  took  away 
)  the  vitality  of  the  true  spirit.     This  was  what  wrought  the  down- 
(  fall  of  both  the  Babylonian  and  the  Egyptian  states  (and  of  the 
>  Assyrian  too,  though  that  was  less  early  in  the  field,  and  had 
(  less  seminative  power)  ;    their  external  splendour  proved  to  the 
j^  detriment  of  their  internal  Hfe.     Polytheism,  though  an  error, 
"^  was  an  error  that  might  in  itself  have  been  overcome  ;   but  when 
polytheism  was  enshrined  in  massive  temples,  made  vivid  to  the 
imaginations  of  men  by  sculptured  images,  confirmed  by  powerful 
priesthoods  and  a  stately  ritual,  and  finally  taken  by  despotic 
monarchs  as  one  of  the  great  supports  of  their  monarchy,  it  became 
impossible  for  pure  religion  to  vivify  these  immense  bulwarks  of 
established  error.     Decadence  was  inevitable  for  them  ;    and  by 
the  year  500  before  Christ  both  Babylon  and  Egypt  had  lost  the 
living  energy  which  had  once  been  so  strong  in  them  ;    they 
were  as  salt  that  had  lost  its  savour  ;  they  were  trodden  underfoot 
of  men.     Assyria  had  perished   more  utterly  even  than  they, 
and  a  century  earlier. 

Yet  for  the   sake   of  their  ancient  history,   Babylonia   and 
Egypt   deserve   to   be   remembered.     The   most   ancient   of   all 


34  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [oh. 

countries  that  have  any  history  whatever,  we  can  hardly  doubt 

that  to  them  the  art  of  writing  was  mainly  due,  though  it  may 

have  been  perfected  by  the  Phoenicians  ;   and  the  invention  of  it 

is  a  title  to  honour  which  can  never  be  effaced.    They  were 

consumed  by  the  fierceness  of  their  own  energy  ;  whereas  the 

milder  flame   of  Chinese  civilisation    has  subsisted   up    to    the 

present  day. 

^(        After  all.  Babylonia  did   not  entirely   succumb  ;    for  from 

( Babylonia  came  Abraham,  the  author  of  true  monotheism  in 

<fthe  worid,  as  I  shall  endeavour  to  show  when  I  come  to  the 

narrative  of  the  real  centre  of  the  religious  forces  of  the  world. 

I  And  though  Moses,  the  great  successor  of  Abraham,  was  not  a 

^  product  of  Egypt,  he  was  greatly  helped  by  Egypt. 

But  before  coming  to  this  central  religious  history,  it  is  desir- 
able that  a  glance  should  be  cast  on  those  great  countries  which 
we  call  heathen,  but  which  have  been  true  lights  to  the  world 
in  their  several  capacities,  and  which  have  not  lost  their  worth 
even  at  the  present  day.  Of  Babylonia  and  Egypt,  interesting 
though  they  are,  I  need  say  no  more  ;  but  ancient  India,  ancient 
Persia,  ancient  China,  ancient  Greece  and  Rome,  are  still  powers 
in  the  world  ;  the  writings  of  their  ancient  representatives  are 
of  singular  force  and  beauty  ;  their  religious  temper,  though 
imperfect  in  various  ways,  is  stUl  capable  of  giving  us  instruction  ; 
we  must  certainly  not  neglect  them,  though  it  was  not  by  them 
that  real  penetration  into  the  invisible  sphere  was  accomplished. 
Of  the  five  countries  just  named,  it  will  be  best  to  begin  with 
India  ;  for  though  Chinese  history  reaches  farther  back  than 
Indian  history  (and  probably  too  Chinese  literature  farther  back 
than  Indian  literature),  yet  India  and  Persia  can  hardly  be 
dissevered,  and  India  and  Persia  together  have  connexions 
with  Babylonia  which  it  will  be  well  not  to  ignore  ;  although 
India  by  itself  might  be  considered  as  purely  separate. 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  that  our  knowledge  of  the  earliest 
history  of  India  is  obtained  simply  and  solely  by  inference  from 
the  language  in  which  the  sacred  books  of  the  Hindus  are  written. 
That  language  is  Sanskrit  ;  and  Sanskrit  is  so  nearly  related, 
}  both  to  the  language  in  which  the  sacred  books  of  Persia  are 
[  written,  and  also  to  Greek  and  Latin,  as  almost  to  compel  us  to 
assume  a  common  ancestry  for  the  nations  who  spoke  those 
languages.  We  cannot  indeed  absolutely  infer  identity  of  race 
from  similarity  of  language  ;  but  the  inference,  where  nothing 
exists  to  make  it  improbable,  cannot  be  deprived  of  force.     It 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  35 

is  probable,  at  all  events,  that  some  of  the  ancestors  of  the  ancient 
Hindus  lived  side  by  side  with  some  of  the  ancestors  of  the 
ancient  Persians,  Greeks,  and  Romans,  in  a  common  country  ; 
and  the  tendency  of  recent  inquiry  has  been  (on  what  are  called 
archaeological  grounds,  that  is^  the  actual  remains  of  men  and 
men's  work  found  in  the  soil)  to  locate  this  country  somewhere 
towards  the  north-west  of  Europe.  Of  the  migrations  which 
ensued  from  this  beginning  we  know  nothing  whatever  from  any 
relic  of  ancient  writing,  hieroglyph,  or  sculpture  ;  that  there 
were  such  migrations  is  the  sum  of  our  knowledge  ;  and  this, 
on  the  whole,  is  due  to  philological  science,  and  is  its  greatest 
triumph.  Other  languages,  which  it  is  not  necessary  here  to 
name,  belong  to  the  same  group  as  those  just  mentioned  ;  and 
the  common  race  marked  out  by  these  kindred  languages  is 
called  the  Aryan  race,  or  "  the  race  of  nobles,"  as  they  proudly 
termed  themselves.  The  countries  along  which  the  current  of 
the  Aryan  peoples  swept  were  thus  on  the  whole  to  the  north 
of  those  in  which  the  more  stationary  Semitic  races  (Babylonian^, 
Palestinian,  Arabic)  Hved  ;  it  was  only  in  Persia  and  India  that 
the  Aryan  races  approached  the  tropical  regions  of  the  earth. 

Not  only  is  historical  evidence  (in  the  proper  sense  of  that 
word)  absent  as  regards  the  first  beginnings  of  the  Aryan  Hindus  ; 
it  is  also  absent  in  a  most  singular  degree  from  the  entire  litera- 
ture of  India  for  more  than  a  thousand  years  after  its  first  begin- 
ning. In  ancient  India  we  have  the  remarkable  phenomenon 
of  a  race  full  of  thought,  feeling,  and  religious  aspiration,  a  race, 
too,  capable  of  framing  a  complex  legal  system,  in  which  never- 
theless the  very  conception  of  a  historical  narrative  had  not 
arisen.  The  Rig-Veda,  the  earhest  of  all  Hindu  compositions, 
is  a  collection  of  rehgious  hymns  ;  the  Atharva-Veda  adds 
religious  incantations  and  charms  to  the  hymnology  ;  the  Brah- 
manas  are  a  collection  of  ritualistic  rules,  interspersed  with 
legends  ;  the  Upanishads  are  an  elaborate,  though  infor- 
mal, philosophical  scheme  ;  the  Code  of  Manu  is  a  legislative, 
but  also  a  semi-religious  work  ;  the  Ramayana  and  Maha- 
bharata  are  epic  poems,  out  of  which  grains  of  history  may  be 
gathered.  But  not  one  scrap  of  genuine  historical  writing  is 
to  be  found  in  all  that  immense  literature  ;  save  in  so  far  as 
oral  traditions  of  the  Buddhists,  which  no  doubt  have  a  historical 

^  The  Babylonians  were  at  first  of  the  Sumerian  race ;  the  Semitic  race  invaded 
the  country  afterwards ;  and  whatever  the  admixture  of  races,  the  Semitic  language 
became  dominant. 

3—2 


36  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

character,  and  which  were  first  set  down  in  writing  in  the  second 
century  before  the  Christian  era,  constitute  an  exception.  But 
the  Brahmanic  or  main  current  of  Hindu  literature  is  (up  to 
the  Christian  era  at  all  events)  totally  devoid  of  historical  works  ; 
and  this  resulted  from  various  causes.  In  the  first  place,  the 
art  of  writing  was  late  in  its  introduction  into  India.  "  Before 
the  first  spreading  of  Buddhism  in  India,"  says  Max  Miiller 
{History  of  Ancient  Sanskrit  Literature,  p.  607),  "  writing  for 
literary  purposes  was  absolutely  unknown  "  ;  that  is,  it  was  abso- 
lutely unknown  till  the  fifth  century  before  Christ.  The  absolute 
first  introduction  of  writing  into  India  is  however  now  put  in  the 
eighth  century  B.C. ;  but  even  after  the  art  of  writing  was  known, 
the  use  of  it  was  looked  upon  with  the  greatest  suspicion  by  the 
Brahmins  ;  thus  we  read  in  the  Maha-bharata,  "  Those  who  sell 
the  Vedas,  and  even  those  who  v,rite  them,  those  also  who  defile 
them,  they  shall  go  to  hell."  (Max  Miiller,  op.  cit.  p.  502). 

Without  the  art  of  writing,  history  must  always  be  of  an  im- 
perfect character ;  for  the  comparison  of  authorities  is  generally 
impossible  unless  those  authorities  have  given  their  testimony 
in  writing.  But  if  we  look  further  into  the  matter,  we  shall 
see  that  there  was  a  yet  deeper  reason  why  the  Hindu  mind 
did  not  produce  histories  ;  and  this  was  because  the  Hindu 
mind  acquired  from  a  very  early  period  an  introspective  bent, 
and  while  cultivating  extraordinary  subtlety  in  abstract  spiritual 
inquiries,  disregarded  external  research  almost  entirely.  Thus 
it  will  be  seen  that  the  verj'  absence  of  historical  works  in  Hindu 
literature  is  eloquent  as  to  the  character  of  the  people  ;  they 
were  spiritually  active  and  originative,  outwardly  passive  and 
uninventive.  It  is  indeed  probable  that  the  Hindu  mind  made 
one  invention  of  real  importance  for  the  well-being  of  mankind, 
the  invention  of  those  figures  which  we  call  Arabic,  which  have 
been  of  such  power  in  facilitating  numerical  calculations  (taken 
in  connexion  with  the  place-value  of  figures  in  the  decimal  nota- 
tion) ;  but  the  invention  is  one  which  belongs  to  the  least  material 
and  most  abstract  side  of  knowledge,  and  it  does  not  belong  to 
the  period  before  the  Christian  era. 

When  then  we  try  to  discover  what  happened  in  the  successive 
epochs  of  Indian  history  before  the  Christian  era,  our  conclusions 
have  in  the  main  to  be  drawn  from  indirect  sources.  Philology 
is  our  first  informant,  geography  our  .second  ;  for  from  the 
mention  of  rivers  in  the  successive  treatises  above  mentioned, 
we  may  trace  the  gradual  progress  of    the  Aryan  race  after  it 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  37 

crossed  the  northern  mountain-barrier.  First  came  the  move- 
ment into  the  valleys  of  the  Indus  and  its  tributaries  ;  onwards 
then  into  the  plains  of  the  Ganges  and  the  Jumna  ;  onwards 
again  into  yet  further  regions  of  the  east  and  the  south.  Other 
inferences  are  to  be  drawn  from  the  character  and  the  subject 
matter  of  the  treatises  ;  from  the  whole  a  brief  but  significant 
story  may  be  evolved.  The  Aryans  with  whom  the  story  is  con- 
cerned were  moulded  by  the  conditions  in  which  they  found 
themselves  into  so  different  a  Hkeness  from  the  ancient  Greeks 
and  Romans,  that  we  could  hardly  conceive  the  stock  to  be  the 
same,  had  we  not  the  languages  to  give  evidence  to  it,  and  did 
we  not  know  the  gradual  transformation  of  character  which  took 
place  in  those  who  migrated  into  the  great  southern  peninsula. 

The  Aryan  Hindus  (and  the  word  "  Hindus  "  imphes  a  home 
near  the  river  Indus)  must  have  been  a  nation  of  warriors  in 
their  first  beginnings.  This  lay  in  the  nature  of  the  case  ;  for 
they  were  winning  land  for  themselves  ;  not  indeed  in  the  tornado 
fashion  of  the  Mongols  in  after  ages,  but  slowly  and  surely,  Hke 
the  Saxons  in  our  own  country,  when  they  beat  back  the  Britons. 
The  hymns  of  the  Rig-Veda  supply  references  to  these  wars  of 
the  Aryans  with  the  ruder  tribes  whom  they  were  supplanting  ; 
but  it  must  be  noted  that  war,  even  at  this  early  period,  was 
not  the  topic  which  most  animated  the  spirits  of  this  conquering 
race.  Religion  was  the  theme  of  the  earliest  Hindu  song  ; 
rehgion,  in  one  of  its  most  natural  forms,  though  not  the  deepest 
or  truest ;  the  awe  which  man  feels  before  the  great  powers  of 
nature,  the  beHef  that  behind  each  manifestation  of  these  powers 
a  personal  spirit  lies  hidden,  and  the  worship  of  these  personal 
spirits.  That  is  the  main,  though  not  the  only,  theme  of  the 
Rig-Veda  ;  and  it  is  treated  with  a  primitive  simplicity  unri- 
valled in  any  other  literature^.  Ancestor  worship,  so  powerful 
in  China,  is  here  subordinate.  It  is  the  great  dome  of  the 
sky  ;  the  mighty  sun,  and  all  the  power  inherent  in  fire  ;  the 
storm- winds,  and  the  beneficent  rains  ;  the  intoxicating  Soma- 
plant  ;  these  are  the  chief  deities  of  the  Aryan  Hindus  in  their 
earliest  known  phase.     But  the  stars  are  not  greatly  honoured  ; 

^  "  Vedic  mythology,"  says  Professor  Macdonell,  "  occupies  a  very  important 
position  in  the  study  of  the  history  of  religions.  Its  oldest  source  presents  to  us  an 
earlier  stage  in  the  evolution  of  beliefs  based  on  the  personification  and  worship  of 
natural  phenomena,  than  any  other  literary  monument  of  the  world.  To  this  oldest 
phase  can  be  traced  by  uninterrupted  development  the  germs  of  the  rehgious  beliefs 
of  the  great  majority  of  the  modern  Indians,  the  only  branch  of  the  Indo-European 
race  in  which  its  original  nature  worship  has  not  been  entirely  supplanted  many 
centuries  ago  by  a  foreign  monotheistic  faith."      Vedic  Mythology,  by  A.  A.  Macdonell, 


38  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  [OH. 

they^  "  slink  off  like  thieves  "  before  the  sun-god.  They  are 
not  worshipped  in  their  own  nature  at  all,  nor  are  they  felt  to 
have  power  over  men  ;  imagination  had  not  yet  invested  them 
with  artificial  authority.  Neither  is  the  moon,  or  even  the  earth, 
greatly  worshipped  at  present  ;  yet  the  earth  in  some  degree 
perhaps*  ;  but  nowise  comparably  to  the  sun,  the  storm-winds, 
or  the  rain.  The  most  powerful  natural  forces  were  the  chief 
objects  of  worship  to  the  primitive  Aryan  Hindus  ;  and  for  such 
a  worship  no  very  complex  imagination  was  needed,  in  which 
respect  this  eariy  religion  differed  very  remarkably  from  the 
Hindu  religion  of  later  days.  These  natural  forces  were  of 
course  personified  ;  the  sim  under  the  greatest  variety  of  names, 
Savitri,  Surya,  Pushan,  Vishnu,  &c.  ;  the  heaven  in  all  its  com- 
plex character  is  Varuna,  to  whom  also  moral  attributes  belong 
more  fully  and  specifically  than  to  any  other  deity  ^  ;  with  Varuna 
is  associated  Mitra,  the  deity  of  the  solar  light ;  Agni  is  the  god 
of  fire  ;  Indra  governs  the  lower  sky,  with  its  clouds  and  fostering 
rains  ;   the  Maruts  are  the  storm-winds. 

A  simple-minded  race  were  they  to  whom  the  religion  just 
described  was  acceptable.  It  might  seem  that  they  hardly  needed 
a  formal  priestly  class  ;  yet  a  formal  priestly  class  did  arise 
among  them  ;  and  then  by  slow  degrees  a  formal  partition  of 
society  into  ranks,  whereby  the  whole  mind  and  character  of 
this  part  of  the  Aryan  race  underwent  a  complete  metamorphosis. 
They  who  had  been  mere  warriors  became  at  length  a  nation  in 
which  thought,  not  action,  was  predominant,  and  thought  the 
most  subtle,  mingled  with  imaginations  the  most  fantastic,  to 
be  found  in  any  community  under  the  sun. 

It  happened  somewhat  in  this  way.  The  further  the  Aryan 
race  penetrated  into  India,  the  less  able  were  they  entirely  to 
drive  out  or  abolish  the  dark-skinned  races  which  had  occupied 
the  land  before  them.  (Some  of  these  races,  especially  the 
Dravidian,  were  of  a  high  type  and  far  from  wanting  in  intellec- 
tual power.)  Thus  then  the  fair-skinned  Aryans  were  compelled 
to  settle  down  side  by  side  with  the  dark  races  ;  it  is  true,  those 
dark-skinned  races  were  their  inferiors,  and  were  generally 
enslaved  by  them,  but  hardly  ever  exterminated.  In  the  desire 
of  the  Aryans  to  keep  their  own  higher  type  uncontaminated 
the  institution  of  caste  began.     (Significant  of  this  origin  is  the 

^  See  the  passage  quoted  by  Monier  Williams  on  the  19th  page  of  his  Indian 
Wisdom. 

*  See  Indian  Wisdom,  p.  14. 

'  See  Macdonell's  Vedic  Mythology,  p.  26. 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  3§ 

fact  that  the  word  for  caste  in  the  Laws  of  Manu  is  varna,  colour.) 
But  meanwhile  other  causes  had  tended  to  deepen  the  distinction 
between  the  different  classes  of  the  Aryans  themselves.  In  their 
original  habitation  we  may  infer  that  priest  and  warrior  and 
husbandman  had  grown  to  be  more  or  less  distinct,  since  we 
find  such  a  distinction  prevailing  among  their  kindred  the  Per- 
sians (including  in  the  term  "  Persians  "  all  the  inhabitants  of 
the  country  between  the  borders  of  India  and  the  rivers  Tigris 
and  Euphrates).  But  in  India  the  distinction  had  been  deepened. 
How  this  happened,  is  matter  of  conjecture  ;  but  we  may  weU 
conceive  that  the  hot  chmate  of  India  slackened  the  energy  of 
the  fighting  class,  and  gave  an  introspective  bias  to  the  medita- 
tions of  the  ministers  of  religion  ;  so  that  the  dignity  of  the  priests 
was  raised  and  their  pecuHar  character  was  emphasised  ;  while 
at  the  same  time  the  warriors,  though  less  warlike,  would  not 
be  less  typically  warriors  than  they  had  been  before.  At  all 
events  at  the  close  of  the  Rig- Veda  period  (possibly  800  B.C., 
but  dates  are  most  uncertain  elements  in  Indian  history)  we  find 
the  four  castes  clearly  named,  and  the  Brahmin  or  priestly  caste 
at  the  head  of  them  ;  though  how  strict  the  separation  was  in 
those  days  between  priest,  warrior,  and  husbandman,  it  is  im- 
possible for  us  to  say.  The  passage  in  the  Rig-Veda  here  referred 
to  is  in  the  90th  hymn  of  the  tenth  Mandala  ;  in  which,  after 
describing  mythically  how  the  first  man  was  divided  by  the 
Grods  into  four  parts,  the  poet  says  : 

The  Brahmin  was  his  mouth,  the  kingly  soldier  was  made  his  arms, 
the  husbandman  his  thighs,  the  servile  Sudra  issued  from  his  feet.  Indian 
Wisdom,  p.  25. 

It  is  clear  that  the  fourth  caste,  the  "  Servile  Sudra,"  is 
greatly  inferior  to  the  other  three  ;  and  we  must  conclude  (as 
was  said  above)  that  this  was  a  result  of  the  Sudras  being  a 
conquered  race. 

But  what  were  the  means  by  which  the  Brahmins  attained 
their  superiority  over  the  warrior  caste,  the  Kshatriyas  (to  use 
the  Hindu  term)  ?  Partly  no  doubt  it  was  from  the  cause 
already  indicated,  the  greater  tendency  towards  internal  medita- 
tion and  the  corresponding  diminution  of  external  action  ;  but 
another  cause,  and  one  unfortunately  detrimental  to  the  well- 
being  of  the  entire  people,  lay  in  the  excessive  multiplication  of 
rehgious  performances,  charms,  rites,  and  ceremonies,  in  the 
interest  of  the  Brahmin  or  priestly  class.  Good  and  evil  were 
commingled    in   the   Hindu  religion,   as  in   all   other  religions, 


40  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  [ch. 

and  in  all  the  affairs  of  men  ;  and  in  the  present  instance  both 
the  good  and  the  evil  tended  to  the  exaltation  of  the  priestly 
class.  On  the  side  of  good  must  be  mentioned  the  spiritual 
fervour  of  the  Brahmins  ;  their  gradual  approximation  to  the 
doctrine  of  a  single  divine  power  immanent  in  the  universe  ; 
their  ethical  doctrine  that  self-denial  was  the  right  way  of  life. 
They  erred  however  in  that  they  did  not  think  of  divine  love  as 
the  power  capable  of  saving  men  ;  and  prayer  and  self-denial 
were  more  and  more  conceived  as  agencies  producing  their 
result  by  a  sort  of  mechanical  compulsion.  The  gods  themselves 
were  believed  to  pray,  and  to  win  power  by  praying,  as  by  a 
sort  of  compulsory  charm  ;  and  since  the  original  meaning  of 
"  brahma  "  is  "  prayer,"  the  highest  god  (named  in  early  days 
Prajapati)  was  in  the  end  named  Brahma,  or  in  other  words 
prayer  itself  was  sublimated  into  a  deity.  To  this  mixture  of 
good  and  evil  on  the  side  of  doctrine  corresponded  a  good  and  an 
evil  on  the  side  of  practice.  Refinement  increased,  and  tempers 
grew  mUder  ;  but  the  Brahmin  also  grew  more  greedy  of  the  gain 
which  the  sacrifices  brought  him,  and  the  Kshatriya  dared  not 
lessen  his  sacrificial  duties  by  one  jot  or  one  tittle.  From  the 
Rig-Veda  indeed  one  could  not  have  inferred  this  ;  but  the 
Atharva-Veda  with  its  abundance  of  magical  rites  is  clearly  in- 
dicative of  it,  and  in  the  Brahmanas  it  stares  one  in  the  face. 
"  Like  sacrifice  to  the  gods  are  the  fees  paid  to  the  human  gods 
the  priests  " — so  says  the  Satapatha  Brahmana^  ;  and  the 
complexity  of  gods  and  of  sacrifices  grew  continually  greater. 
Strange  it  is  to  reflect  that  while  the  subtle  reasoning  of  Hindu 
theologians  was  continually  drawing  them  nearer  to  the  truth  of 
the  essential  unity  of  the  Deity  (a  doctrine  embraced  by  them 
first  as  theism,  afterwards  as  pantheism),  the  practice  of  the 
priests  continually  drew  them  more  and  more  in  the  direction 
of  a  fantastic  polytheism  ;  but  the  causes  of  both  tendencies 
are  sufficiently  apparent,  and  subtle  intellects  rarely  find  it 
difficult  to  reconcile  the  irreconcilable.  Thus  it  was  that  the 
Brahmins  in  the  end  overmastered  the  warrior  caste,  and  made 
themselves  the  real  rulers  of  Aryan  India.  We  need  not  suppose, 
nor  is  it  at  all  probable,  that  they  won  their  predominance  by 
material  fighting  ;  though  statements  implying  this  appear  in 
the  great  epics,  which  are  comparatively  late. 

Meanwhile  the  Aryan  conquerors  had  been  spreading  from 
west  to  east,  till  they  were  in  touch  with  the  Bay  of  Bengal  ;   but 

•  Quoted  by  Dr  Hopkins  in  The  Religioius  of  India,  p.  179. 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  41 

it  would  hardly  seem  that  they  had  penetrated  south  of  the 
Vindhya  hiUs,  or  in  other  words  into  the  true  peninsular 
part  of  India,  when  the  real  philosophy  of  the  Hindu  reUgion 
received  clear  form  in  the  Upanishads.  As  the  Rig-Veda 
represents  the  primary  natural  religion  of  the  Aryan  Hindus  ; 
as  the  Atharva-Veda  represents  this  religion  obscured  by  their 
first  natural  superstition  ;  as  the  Brahmanas  represent  their 
complex  ceremonial  organisation  ;  so  the  Upanishads  represent 
the  culmination  of  their  philosophy.  It  would  appear  at  first 
sight  as  if  these  four  branches  of  thought  and  practice  might 
have  arisen  at  the  same  time,  for  the  parts  of  human  nature 
to  which  they  appeal  are  different  and  are  all  real ;  but  as  a 
matter  of  fact  their  contents  show  that  they  arose  on  the  whole 
in  the  order  just  named  ;  though  there  was  a  good  deal  of  o\ier- 
lapping,  and  no  actual  date  must  be  pressed.  Speaking  loosely, 
we  may  say  that  this  whole  range  of  Uterature  occupied  the  best 
part  of  a  thousand  years  in  its  production,  from  1500  B.C.  to 
500  B.C.,  and  that  the  close  of  the  Upanishads  coincides  very 
nearly  with  the  rise  of  Buddhism.  And  as  the  literature  here 
mentioned  (together  with  the  Laws  of  Manu)  constitutes  the  most 
important  part  of  the  pre-Christian  Hindu  literature  (not  including 
the  writings  of  the  Buddhists  under  that  appellation),  it  wiU  be 
well  if  I  illustrate  by  a  few  quotations  the  progress  of  the  highest 
thought  and  feeling  as  shown  in  these  works.  Pure  Theism  is 
expressed  in  one  of  the  hymns  of  the  Rig-Veda  ;  a  late  hymn, 
possibly,  as  compared  with  the  rest  of  that  collection  ;  but  still 
very  early.  I  quote  the  translation  of  part  of  it  given  in  Max 
Miiller's  Ancient  Sanskrit  Literature  (j).  569)  : 

In  the  beginning  there  arose  the  Source  of  golden  light — He  was  the 
only  born  Lord  of  all  that  is.  He  stablished  the  earth,  and  this  sky; — 
Who  is  the  God  to  whom  we  shall  offer  our  sacrifice  ? 

He  who  gives  life,  He  who  gives  strength  ;  whose  blessing  all  the 
bright  Gods  desire  ;  whose  shadow  is  immortality  ;  whose  shadow  is 
death  ;    Who  is  the  God  to  whom  we  shall  offer  our  sacrifice  ? 

He  who  through  his  power  is  the  only  King  of  the  breatliing  and 
awakening  world  ;  He  who  governs  all,  man  and  beast  ;  Who  is  the 
God  to  whom  we  shall  offer  our  sacrifice  ? 

He  whose  power  these  snowy  mountains,  whose  power  the  sea  pro- 
claims, with  the  distant  river  ;  He  whose  these  regions  are,  as  it  were  his 
two  arms  ;    Who  is  the  God  to  whom  we  shall  offer  our  sacrifice  ? 

Five  stanzas  more  are  in  the  same  vein  ;  and  then  comes 
a  tenth  stanza,  in  which  it  is  affirmed  that  Prajapati  (i.e.  the 
Lord  of  all  creatures)  is  the  God  to  whom  sacrifices  must  be 


42  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

offered,  and  from  whom  we  ask  wealth.  This  last  stanza  is 
often  thought  to  be  a  later  addition.  It  is  a  question  of  feeling 
more  than  of  evidence  ;  something  might  perhaps  be  said  for  its 
genuineness*.  Praj&pati,  though  the  oldest  name  for  the  Supreme 
Being,  is  probably  not  so  old  as  some  names  of  the  more  special 
deities.  In  this  poem  Hindu  Theism  reaches  its  high-water 
mark  ;  pantheism  is  not  hinted  at  in  it,  and  polytheism  is  quite 
in  the  background  ;  the  one  Creator  occupies  the  whole  soul  of 
the  poet. 

For  a  moment  then,  the  religious  consciousness  of  India  rested 
in  that  behef  which  is  the  foundation  of  all  true  rehgion,  the  belief 
in  a  Creative  Spirit  from  whom  all  that  exists  has  received  its  life 
and  being,  by  whom  all  that  exists  is  guided  and  governed.  Such 
a  belief  naturally  leads  to  action,  and  receives  its  interpretation 
through  action  ;  but  if  action  be  relaxed,  the  belief  in  God  sinks 
into  that  passive  contemplation  of  divine  motions  pervading  the 
universe  which  is  known  as  the  belief  in  pantheism.  Action 
did  become  relaxed  among  the  Hindus,  as  in  the  intense  heat 
of  that  climate  was  not  unnatural  ;  pantheistic  belief  followed, 
and  appeared  the  highest  attainment  of  human  reason  ;  and  while 
among  the  multitude  this  lofty  contemplation  was  impossible, 
the  multitude  were  incapable  of  rising  to  true  belief  in  God,  and 
sank  again  into  that  polytheism  which  imaginative  but  un- 
reasoning minds  so  naturally  embrace.  It  was  not  quite  the 
same  as  the  primitive  nature  worship  ;  but  it  was  no  advance  on 
that  ancient  view. 

At  the  very  end  of  the  Rig -Veda  pantheism  appears.  Perhaps 
most  distinctly  in  the  hymn  which  is  numbered  as  Mandala,  x.  90, 
and  which  is  called  the  Purusha-sukta  ;  but  the  remarkable 
hymn  in  which  the  creation  of  the  world  is  described  {Mandala,  x. 
120)  gives  more  idea  of  that  speculative  process  which  has  so  much 
natural  affinity  with  pantheistic  belief,  and  which  stands  so  very 
far  apart  from  the  practical  conduct  of  life.  Let  the  reader  bear 
in  mind  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  and  mark  the  contrast  with 
the  hymn  now  to  be  quoted,  which  deals  with  precisely  the  same 
subject^ : 

In  the  beginning  there  was  neither  nought  nor  aught, 
Tlien  there  was  neither  sky  nor  atmosphere  above. 
Wliat   then  enshrouded  all   this  teeming  universe  ? 
In  the  receptacle  of  what  was  it  contained  ? 

*  Profes'sor  Mardonell  assumes  it  to  be  genuine  (Vedic  Mythology,  p.  119). 

•  I  quote  it  from  the  Indian  Wisdom  of  Monier  Williams,  p.  22. 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  43 

Was  it  enveloped  in  the  gulf  profound  of  water  ? 

Then  there  was  neither  death  nor  immortality, 

Then  there  was  neither  day,  nor  night,  nor  light,  nor  darkness, 

Only  the  Existent  One  breathed  calmly,  self-contained. 

Nought  else  than  him  there  was  ;  nought  else  above,  beyond. 

Then  first  came  darkness  hid  in  darkness,  gloom  in  gloom. 

Next  all  was  water,  all  a  chaos  indiscreet. 

In  which  the  One  lay  void,  shrouded  in  nothingness. 

Then  turning  inwards  he  by  self-developed  force 

Of  inner  fervour  and  intense  abstraction,  grew. 

And  now  in  him  Desire,  the  primal  germ  of  mind. 

Arose,  which  learned  men,  profoundly  searching,  say 

Is  the  first  subtle  bond,  connecting  Entity 

With  nullity.     This  ray  that  kindled  dormant  life. 

Where  was  it  then  ?   before  ?    or  was  it  found  above  ? 

Were  there  parturient  powers  and  latent  qualities. 

And  fecund  principles  beneath,  and  active  forces 

That  energized  aloft  ?  Who  knows  ?  Who  can  declare  ? 

How  and  from  what  has  sprung  this  Universe  ?    the  gods 

Themselves  are  subsequent  to  its  development. 

Who,  then,  can  penetrate  the  secret  of  its  rise  ? 

Whether  'twas  framed  or  not,  made  or  not  mgide  ;  he  only 

Who  in  the  highest  heaven  sits,  the  omniscient  lord 

Assuredly  knows  all,  or  haply  knows  he  not. 

Profound  meditation  there  is  in  that  passage,  a  profound 
sense  of  mystery  ;  but  there  is  not  the  feehng  of  awe  before 
a  Creative  Power  greater  than  oneself.  In  the  book  of  Genesis 
the  reverse  is  the  case  ;  the  writer  of  Genesis  is  full  of  awe  before 
God  ;  but  the  mystery  of  Creation  is  not  dwelt  upon  ;  his  mood 
is  affirmative,  not  meditative.  With  all  the  inaccuracies  in  detail 
of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  (inaccuracies  hardly  to  be  avoided 
when  that  book  was  written)  the  writer  has  firm  hold  in  his  feehngs 
of  where  the  creative  power  lies  ;  it  Hes  in  God  ;  after  that  has 
been  acknowledged,  all  other  feeling  is  swallowed  up  in  trust  and 
awe.  But  the  Hindu  philosopher  has  no  sense  of  the  value  of 
trust ;  he  does  not  know  how  intimately  trust  is  connected  with 
all  fruitful  action  ;  and  the  chief  reason  of  his  ignorance  is  because 
he  has  come  to  undervalue  action  ;  for  it  is  in  action  that  trust 
becomes  necessary.  The  Hindu  philosopher  throws  all  his  force 
into  meditation  :  yet  he  is  in  presence  of  a  problem  not  to  be 
solved  by  meditation.  All  he  can  do  is  to  make  us  feel  that 
we  are  looking  into  a  profound  depth,  in  which  there  is  but  a 
spark  or  two  on  which  our  vision  can  rest  determinately.  The 
feehng  produced  is  impressive,  but  there  is  httle  fruitfulness  in 
the  method  ;   it  has  but  superficial  effect  in  framing  society. 

Thus,  then,  at  the  time  when  the  first  period  of  Hindu  thought 


44  Ancient  religion:  [ch. 

and  action  was  closing,  the  period  signalised  by  those  lyrical 
hymns  called  the  Rig-Veda,  a  habit  of  life  had  been  entered  upon, 
in  which  action  was  too  little  prominent,  thought  too  much. 
Yet  in  some  form  or  other  action  must  take  place  ;  and  this  was 
exactly  the  opportunity  for  priests  to  enter  in  with  ritual  and 
services,  sacrifices  and  forms  of  expiation.  This  ceremonial 
religion  is  the  main  theme  of  the  collection  called  the  Brahmanas  ; 
but  earlier  than  the  Br&hmanas  is  the  collection  called  the  Atharva- 
Veda,  in  which  charms  and  incantations  are  predominant,  a 
practice  of  the  least  commendable  kind.  In  short,  the  warrior 
race  which  had  entered  India  from  the  north-west  centuries  before, 
and  was  then  full  of  forward-pushing  energy,  had  now  lost  its 
old  temper,  and  had  taken  instead  a  mood  of  mystical  acquies- 
cence, and  of  subservience  to  occult  powers.  It  is  significant  that 
at  the  same  time  idols  begin  to  appear  in  religious  worship. 
Possibly  even  the  Rig- Veda,  in  one  passage,  mentions  an  idol  ; 
at  least  this  is  the  natural  interpretation  of  the  following  words  : 

Who  will  buy  this  my  Indra  for  ten  cows  ?  When  he  has  slain  his  foes 
he  may  give  him  back  to  me*. 

The  Brahmanas  again,  in  their  later  parts,  recognise  idols. 
Thus  the  polytheism  of  the  lower  classes  among  the  Hindus  was 
not  tending  to  better  things  ;  it  was  on  that  downward  course, 
which  ultimately  produced  the  worship  of  Siva  or  Seeva  (whom 
English  readers  of  Southey's  KeJmma  will  well  remember) ;  from 
which  source  fear  was  engendered,  affecting  all  the  thoughts  of 
men  respecting  supernatural  things. 

But  the  higher  members  of  the  race  were  not  decadent.  The 
worship  of  Siva  does  not  enter  into  the  Upanishads,  That  great 
'treatise,  or  series  of  treatises,  exhibits  the  highest  effort  of  the 
Hindu  mind  to  define  the  relation  between  man  and  the  Infinite 
Creative  Power  from  whom  man  has  derived  his  being,  and  under 
whose  superintendence  the  universe  lies.  The  Upanishads  take 
up  the  question  which  the  Rig-Veda  in  its  closing  hymns  had 
propounded,  and  endeavour  to  give  this  question  a  full  answer. 
The  answer  thus  given  is  the  product  of  deep  meditation  and 
labour  ;  it  merits  the  attention  of  philosophers  ;  but  it  is  involved 
in  this  radical  weakness,  that  it  assumes  intellectual  thought, 
and  not  love  and  trust,  to  be  the  final  revealer  of  the  spiritual 
unity  of  all  things.  The  result  of  this  was  that  conduct,  or  the 
ordinary  action  of  men  in  the  world,  was  undervalued  ;  it  would 

*  Rig-Veda,  iv.  24.  10.  I  take  the  quotation  from  Macdonell's  Vedic  Mythology, 
p.  155,  as  also  the  statement  about  the  IJrahmana.s. 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  45 

not  be  correct  to  say  that  conduct  is  ignored  by  Hindu  thinkers, 
but  the  place  which  it  holds  is  subordinate.  In  all  this  the  con- 
trast between  the  Hindu  mind  and  the  Israehte  mind  (which  was 
engaged  about  the  same  time  in  the  attempt  to  solve  the  same 
question)  is  most  striking, 

A  few  passages  from  the  Upanishads  will  illustrate  in  a  more 
precise  manner  the  teaching  briefly  characterised  in  the  above 
sentences.  The  first  passage  that  I  will  quote  is  a  command  to 
beUeve,  and  a  command  what  to  beheve. 

Man  is  a  creature  of  will.  According  to  what  his  will  is  in  this  world, 
so  will  he  be  when  he  has  departed  this  Ufe.  Let  him  therefore  have  this 
will  and  belief  :  The  intelligent,  whose  body  is  spirit,  whose  form  is  light, 
whose  thoughts  are  true,  whose  nature  is  like  ether  (omnipresent  and 
invisible),  from  whom  all  works,  all  desires,  all  sweet  odours  and  tastes 
proceed  ;  he  who  embraces  all  this,  who  never  speaks,  and  is  never  sur- 
prised, he  is  myself  within  the  heart,  smaller  than  a  com  of  rice,  smaller 
than  a  com  of  barley,  smaller  than  a  mustard  seed,  smaller  than  a  canary 
seed  or  the  kernel  of  a  canary  seed.  He  also  is  myself  within  the  heart, 
greater  than  the  earth,  greater  than  the  sky,  greater  than  heaven,  greater 
than  all  these  worlds.  He  from  whom  all  works,  all  desires,  all  sweet 
odours  and  tastes  proceed,  who  embraces  all  this,  who  never  speaks  and 
who  is  never  surprised,  he,  my  self  within  the  heart,  is  that  Brahman. 
When  I  shall  have  departed  from  hence,  I  shall  obtain  him  (that  Self). 
He  who  has  this  faith  has  no  doubt ;  thus  said  Sandilya,  yea,  thus  he  said. 
Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  i.  p.  48. 

"  Brahman  "  and  "  Self  "  have  the  same  meaning  in  the  above 
passage,  and  both  are  identified  with  Absolute  Being  ;  we  might 
almost  sum  up  the  meaning  of  the  passage  thus  :  "  The  Absolute 
exists  in  man."  But  the  Hindu  philosopher  is  aware  that  man 
in  his  present  state  does  not  realise  the  existence  in  himself, 
in  his  own  sensuous  nature,  of  the  Absolute  ;  man  has  to  be  taught 
to  reahse  it ;  and  the  following  passage  gives  some  idea  of  the 
manner  in  which  the  instruction  is  to  be  conveyed  ;  it  is  a  dialogue 
between  an  instructor  and  his  pupil  : 

"  When  one  attends  on  a  tutor  (spiritual  guide),  then  one  believes. 
One  who  does  not  attend  on  a  tutor,  does  not  believe.  Only  he  who 
attends,  believes.  This  attention  on  a  tutor,  however,  we  must  desire 
to  understand." 

"  Sir,  I  desire  to  understand  it." 

"  When  one  performs  all  sacred  duties  "  [the  duties  of  a  student,  such 
as  restraint  of  the  senses,  concentration  of  the  mind,  &c. — so  Max  Miiller 
explains  the  words  of  the  original]  "  then  one  attends  really  on  a  tutor. 
One  who  does  not  perform  his  duties,  does  not  really  attend  on  a  tutor. 
Only  he  who  performs  his  duties,  attends  on  his  tutor.  This  performance 
of  duties,  however,  we  must  desire  to  understand." 

"  Sir,  I  desire  to  understand  it." 


46  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

"  When  one  obtains  bliss  (in  oneself)  then  one  performs  duties.  One 
who  does  not  obtain  bliss,  does  not  perform  duties.  Only  he  who  obtains 
bliss,  performs  duties.     This  bliss,  however,  we  must  desire  to  understand." 

"  Sir,  I  desire  to  xmderstand  it." 

"  The  Infinite  is  bliss.  There  is  no  bliss  in  anything  finite.  Infinity 
only  is  bliss.     This  Infinity,  however,  we  must  desire  to  understand." 

"  Sir,  I  desire  to  understand  it." 

"  When  one  sees  nothing  else,  hears  nothing  else,  understands  nothing 
else,  that  is  the  Infinite.  When  one  sees  something  else,  hears  something 
else,  tmderstands  something  else,  that  is  the  finite.  The  Infinite  is  im- 
mortal, the  finite  is  mortal." 

"  Sir,  in  what  does  the  Infinite  rest  ?  " 

"  In  its  own  greatness,  or  not  even  in  greatness.  In  the  world  they 
call  cows  and  horses,  elephants  and  gold,  slaves,  wives,  fields  and  houses, 
greatness.  I  do  not  mean  this.  .  .  .The  Infinite  indeed  is  below,  above, 
behind,  before,  right  and  left — it  is  indeed  all  this.  Now  follows  the 
explanation  of  the  Infinite  sis  the  I :  I  am  below,  I  am  above,  I  am  behind, 
before,  right  and  left — I  am  all  this.  Next  follows  the  explanation  of 
the  Infinite  as  the  Self  :  Self  is  below  above,  behind,  before,  right  and 
left — Self  is  all  this.  He  who  sees,  perceives,  and  understands  this,  loves 
the  Self,  delights  in  the  Self,  revels  in  the  Self,  rejoices  in  the  Self — he 
becomes  a  Svaraj  (an  autocrat  or  selfruler)  ;  he  is  lord  and  master  in  all 
the  worlds.  But  those  who  think  differently  from  this,  live  in  perishable 
worlds,  and  have  other  beings  for  their  rulers."  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 
vol.  I.  pp.  122-124. 

An  intelligent  reader  of  the  above  passage  must  be  divided 
between  admiration  of  the  wonderful  subtlety  of  it,  and  a  sense 
that  the  subtlety  is  wrongly  directed.  It  will  be  observed  that 
in  the  whole  passage  not  only  is  no  harmony  obtained  between 
man  in  his  moods  of  desire  and  labour,  patience  and  courage, 
as  shown  in  ordinary  Ufe,  and  the  thinker  who  transcends  ordinary 
life  for  the  sake  of  divine  hopes  and  divine  experiences ;  but  such 
harmony  is  from  the  outset  regarded  as  impossible.  The  thinker 
is  represented  as  deserting  the  finite  in  order  to  obtain  the  infinite. 
Cows  and  horses  belong  to  the  finite,  my  true  self  belongs  to  the 
infinite  ;  the  absolutely  right  course  is  for  me  to  desert  my  cows 
and  horses  and  attend  solely  to  my  true  self.  Yes,  and  the 
absolutely  right  course  will  be  for  me  to  desert  my  wife  too  ; 
so  did  the  great  Hindu  sage  Yajiiavalkya,  whose  affection  for  his 
wife  Maitreyi  could  not  for  a  moment  be  doubted.  He  told  her, 
before  he  left  her  for  ever,  that  the  cause  of  his  love  for  her  lay 
in  his  love  for  the  greater  or  Absolute  Self  ;  therefore  he  must 
follow  that  love  which  was  causative  of  all  other  love. 

Now  it  is  true  that  some  Christian  mystics  have  said  words 
and  done  deeds  not  quite  dissimilar  to  those  of  Yajnavalkya, 
and  that  even  some  words  of  Jesus  Christ  himself  might  appear 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  47 

to  set  the  finite  and  the  infinite  at  variance  with  one  another 
and  to  recommend  the  desertion  of  all  things  belonging  to  this 
world  for  the  sake  of  a  mystical  union  with  the  Divine  Being. 
But  this  is  not  the  real  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ,  when  all  his 
sayings  are  considered.  The  main  current  of  Biblical  teaching, 
most  undoubted  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  really  adhered  to 
in  the  New,  in  spite  of  some  difficulties  occasioned  by  the  con- 
templation of  eternal  life,  is  to  represent  the  finite  as  sustained 
by  the  Infinite,  fed  from  the  Infinite,  tending  towards  the  Infinite ; 
not  as  being  in  opposition  to  the  Infinite.  In  that  petition  of 
the  Lord's  prayer,  "  Thy  will  be  done  in  earth,  as  it  is  in  heaven," 
it  is  assumed  that  our  ordinary  earthly  fife  may  present  the  pattern 
of  the  divine  life  ;  there  is  no  abandonment  of  our  ordinary  life 
assumed  or  recommended.  One  must  not  deny  that  there  has 
been  an  element  in  the  Christian  belief  and  practice  of  the  past 
which  may  fairly  be  put  as  parallel  with  the  doctrine  of  the 
Upanishads,  and  with  the  practice  which  resulted  from  that 
doctrine  among  the  Hindus  ;  but  it  has  not  been  the  leading, 
central,  and  finally  dominant  doctrine  and  practice  of  Christians^. 
Nor,  it  is  fair  to  say,  are  the  Upanishads  on  their  side  devoid 
of  passages  which  mitigate  the  extreme  doctrine  of  deserting  the 
finite  in  order  to  be  absorbed  into  the  infinite.  But  their  extreme 
doctrine  has  been  followed  among  Hindus  for  a  length  of  time 
and  with  a  severity  of  practice  beyond  any  parallel  that  could 
be  adduced  from  the  history  of  Christianity.  With  what  severity 
it  has  been  followed  will  be  seen  by  the  extracts  that  I  will  now 
quote  from  Monier  Williams  : 

The  aim  of  the  Yoga  is  to  teach  the  means  by  which  the  human  soul 

may  attain  complete  union  with  the  supreme  Soul.     This  fusion  or  union 

of  individual  with  iiniversal  spirit  may  be  effected  even  in  the  body.  .  .  . 

In  the  Sakuntald   (act   vii.  verse    175)    there   is  a  description  of    an 

ascetic  engaged  in  Yoga,  whose  condition  of  fixed  trance  and  immovable 

impassiveness  has  lasted  so  long  that  ants  had  thrown  up  a  mound  as  high 

!  as  his  waist  without  being  disturbed,  and  birds  had  built  their  nests  in 

the  long  clotted  tresses  of  his  tangled  hair.     This  may  be  thought  a  mere 

flight  of  poetical  fancy,  but  a  Mohammedan  traveller,  whose  narrative 

is  quoted  by  Mr  Mill  (British  India,  i.  355)  once  actually  saw  a  man  in 

India  standing  motionless  with  his  face  turned  towards  the  sun.     The 

same  traveller,  having  occasion  to  revisit  the  same  spot  sixteen  years 

l  afterwards,  found  the  very  same  man  in  the  very  same  attitude.     Such 

''  men  have  been  known  to  fix  their  gaze  on  the  sun's  disk  till  sight  has 

^  The  question  whether  the  New  Testament  commands  or  favours  asceticism  is 
of  course  different  from  the  question  whether  Christians  in  any  age  have  actually 
been  ascetics.  The  former  is  the  more  important  question  ;  but  I  must  not  say  more 
on  the  point  here. 


48  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

been  extinguished.  This  is  paralleled  by  a  particular  form  of  austerity 
described  in  Manu,  vi.  23,  where  mention  is  made  of  the  Pahca-tapas,  a 
Yogi  who  during  the  three  hottest  months  (April,  May  and  June),  sits 
between  four  blazing  fires  placed  towards  the  foiu"  quarters,  with  the 
burning  sun  above  his  head  to  form  a  fifth.  In  fact,  a  Yogi  was  actually 
seen  not  long  ago  (Mill's  India,  i.  353)  seated  between  four  such  fires  on 
a  qu£MlranguIar  stage.  He  stood  on  one  leg  gazing  at  the  sun  while  these 
fires  were  lighted  at  the  four  comers.  Then  pleicing  himself  upright  on 
his  head,  with  his  feet  elevated  in  the  air,  he  remained  for  three  hours  in 
that  position.  He  then  seated  himself  cross-legged  and  continued  bearing 
the  raging  heat  of  the  svm  above  his  head  and  the  fires  which  surrounded 
him  till  the  end  of  the  day,  occasionally  adding  combustibles  with  his 
own  hands  to  increase  the  flames.     Indian  Wisdom,  pp.  102,  104-5. 

I  do  not  think  that  any  one,  who  compares  the  actual  practice 
of  the  Yogis  as  here  described  with  the  precepts  laid  down  in  the 
dialogue  quoted  from  the  Upanishads,  will  doubt  that  there  is 
some  real  causative  connexion  between  the  precepts  and  the 
practice.  It  is  true  that  the  Yogis,  over  and  above  thSir  desire 
of  being  united  with  the  Divine  Being,  had  also  a  behef  that  the 
pain  of  their  asceticism  deserved  and  would  receive  a  reward 
hereafter ;  but  the  Upanishads  teach  the  value  of  penance 
{Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xv.  pp.  64-66)  and  the  reward  of 
good  works,  so  that  on  this  side  also  precept  and  practice  are 
connected.  Yet  we  cannot  but  ask  the  question  :  Would  the 
authors  of  the  Upanishads  have  approved  of  the  practice  of  the 
Yogis  ?  We  can  hardly  think  so.  Though  their  teaching  led 
in  that  direction,  yet  all  teaching  ought  to  be  received  with 
intelligence  (cum  grano  salis)  sufficiently  to  prevent  the  accept- 
ance of  preposterous  conclusions  which  appear  to  be  logical. 
There  is  in  the  Upanishads  human  feeling,  much  recognition  of  the 
value  of  affection,  even  some  recognition  of  the  love  of  God  as 
a  motive.  When,  in  the  Katha-Upanishad,  Nakiketas  has  been 
devoted  to  death  by  his  angry  father,  he  goes  to  the  house  of 
Yama  or  Death,  and  never  thinks  of  asking  for  his  own  life, 
but  the  first  gift  he  asks  for  is  that  his  father  may  be  free  from 
anger  towards  him.  Again,  for  a  milder  exposition  of  philo- 
sophical doctrine  than  that  contained  in  the  dialogue  between 
teacher  and  pupil  above  quoted,  take  the  following  : 

That  (the  Brahman)  is  the  true  Brahma-city,  (not  the  body).  In  it 
all  desires  are  contained.  It  is  the  Self,  free  from  sin,  free  from  old  age, 
from  death  and  grief,  from  hunger  and  thirst,  which  desires  ntjthing 
but  what  it  ought  to  d(;sire,  and  imagines  nothing  but  what  it  ouyht  to 
imagiiK;.  ..  .Those  wlio  depart  from  hence,  after  having  discovered  the 
Self  and  those  true  desires,  for  them  there  is  freedom  in  all  the  worlds. 
Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  I.  pp.  12(5-7. 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  49 

Here,  it  will  be  seen,  honourable  desires  are  recognised ;  and 
there  is  a  domestic  touch  in  the  following  passage,  descriptive  of 
a  good  man,  from  the  close  of  the  Khandogya  Upanishad  : 

He  who  has  learned  the  Veda  from  a  family  of  teachers,  according  to 
the  sacred  rule,  in  the  leisure  times  left  from  the  duties  to  be  performed 
for  the  Guru  (the  preceptor),  who,  after  receiving  his  discharge,  has  settled 
in  his  own  house,  keeping  up  the  memory  of  what  he  has  learned  by  repeat- 
ing it  regularly  in  some  sacred  spot,  who  has  begotten  virtuous  sons, 
and  concentrated  all  his  senses  on  the  Self,  never  giving  pain  to  any  crea- 
ture except  at  the  tirthas  (sacrifices,  &c.),  he  who  behaves  thus  all  his 
life,  reaches  the  world  of  Brahman,  and  does  not  return,  yea,  he  does  not 
return.     Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  i.  p.  144. 

It  must  be  observed,  in  reference  to  this  last  phrase,  "  he  does 
not  return,"  that  the  Upanishads  clearly  recognise  the  trans- 
migration of  souls  ;  and  they  are  the  first  of  the  great  Hindu 
treatises  which  do  recognise  this  doctrine.  The  transmigration 
of  souls  fits  very  weU  into  a  system  which  makes  absorption 
into  the  Infinite  the  final  crown  of  man's  being  ;  for  many  men 
are  obviously  not  fitted  to  obtain  the  final  reward  of  virtue, 
and  for  them  a  fresh  period  of  probation  is  readily  conceivable. 
At  the  same  time  the  Hindu  imagination  provided  very  serious 
hells  (or  possibly  they  should  be  called  purgatories)  between 
the  successive  lives  of  transmigrating  souls,  where  distinct  punish- 
ment has  been  deserved. 

With  all  the  defects  of  the  Hindu  religion,  a  conscientious 
struggle  was  involved  in  it.  Were  I  to  proceed  further  on  the 
rehgious  fine,  Buddhism  would  be  the  next  topic  ;  but  that  great 
religion  must  be  left  for  another  chapter.  Meanwhile,  religion 
is  not  the  whole  of  fife,  however  closely  it  may  be  intertwined 
with  life  ;  what  progress  then  were  the  Hindus  making  in  secular 
matters  ?  Life  goes  on,  whether  men  be  religious  or  irreligious ; 
whether  their  religion  be  sound  and  true,  or  a  superstition.  The 
reUgion  of  the  Hindus  having  been  such  as  is  here  described, 
what  was  the  ordinary  Hfe  of  the  Hindus  like  ?  They  had  begun 
as  a  clan  of  invading  warriors  ;  one  may  conceive  what  their 
life  was  Hke  in  those  aggressive  days  ;  but  when  they  had  settled 
down,  and  were  lords  of  the  aboriginal  tribes,  what  was  life  like 
in  this  new  state,  among  the  lords  themselves,  their  vassals,  and 
their  slaves  ?  Not  a  very  happy  life,  it  is  certain.  The  hot  sun 
had  sucked  out  their  energy  ;  nature  was  large  and  abundant 
around  them,  it  is  true,  but  nature  teemed  with  hostihties  ;  and 
worse  than  wild  beasts  or  serpents  was  the  danger  of  disease 
and  famine.     Men  may  contend  against,  may  conquer,  physical 

M.  D.A.  4 


60  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [oh. 

difficulties  ;  but  for  this  a  store  of  native  strength  is  needed, 
and  a  strength  that  shows  itself  in  organisation  ;  whereas  the 
crude  simplicity  of  the  organisation  which  prevailed  among  the 
Hindus  is  in  itself  a  token  of  their  inability  to  become  the  masters 
of  nature.  That  organisation  was  the  caste  system  ;  of  which, 
indeed,  I  have  already  spoken  ;  but  it  has  been  too  important, 
too  long  enduring  an  institution  not  to  demand  some  account, 
not  only  how  it  came  to  be  what  it  is,  but  also  how  it  acted, 
for  good  or  for  harm. 

We  must  not  think  it  altogether,  and  in  every  respect,  an  evil. 
The  caste  system  sprang  from  natural  causes,  from  motives 
which  were  sincerely  felt  ;  the  distinctions  of  value  on  which 
it  was  based  were  to  a  certain  extent  true  ;  and  though  it  stood 
greatly  in  the  way  of  advance  in  good,  it  had  a  certain  preservative 
power  against  the  forces  of  disorder  which  are  latent  in  all  human 
society.  If  under  it  the  people  of  India  could  not  rise,  it  helped 
them  at  any  rate  not  to  sink  utterly.  The  instinct  of  self-preser- 
vation— a  too  timid  but  not  quite  contemptible  instinct — created 
the  castes  ;  the  opening  words  of  the  following  extract  from  that 
ancient  work,  the  Laws  of  Manu  (i.  87-91)  are  the  practical 
acknowledgement  of  this  : 

In  order  to  protect  this  universe  He,  the  most  resplendent  one  (i.e.  the 
Creator)  assigned  separate  duties  and  occupations  to  those  who  sprang 
from  his  mouth,  arms,  thighs,  and  feet.  To  Brahmanas  he  assigned 
teaching  and  studying  the  Veda,  sacrificing  for  their  own  benefit  and  for 
others,  giving  and  accepting  of  alms.  The  Kshatriya  he  commanded  to 
protect  the  people,  to  bestow  gifts,  to  offer  sacrifices,  to  study  the  Veda, 
and  to  abstain  from  attaching  himself  to  sensual  pleasures  ;  the  Vaisya 
to  tend  cattle,  to  bestow  gifts,  to  offer  sacrifices,  to  study  the  Veda,  to 
trade,  to  lend  money,  and  to  cultivate  land.  One  occupation  only  the 
lord  prescribed  to  the  Sudra,  to  serve  meekly  even  these  other  tliree  castes. 
Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xxv.  p.  24. 

Such  is  the  authoritative  description  of  the  most  durable  and 
rigid  division  that  ever  existed  between  the  classes  of  a  single 
people  ;  for  the  division,  while  inexorably  perpetuating  itself, 
did  nevertheless  assume,  at  all  events  when  the  Laws  of  Manu 
were  written,  that  the  people  was  one.  Beginning,  it  would 
seem,  while  some  difference  of  hue  still  existed  between  rulers 
and  ruled,  it  lasted  after  this  had  died  away. 

On  this  foundation  of  caste  Hindu  legislation  is  built  up. 
The  Laws  of  Manu  do  not  absolutely  forbid  intermarriage  between 
different  castes  ;    and  it  might  be  thought  that,  intermarriage 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  51 

once  being  allowed,  the  whole  system  would  break  down  ;  but 
great  care  is  taken  that  this  shall  not  happen.  The  rules  are 
given  in  the  Laws  of  Manu  (in.  4,  12-15)  : 

Having  bathed,  with  the  permission  of  his  teacher,  and  performed 
according  to  the  rule  the  Samavartana  (the  rite  on  returning  home)  a 
twice -bom  man  shall  marry  a  wife  of  equal  caste  who  is  endowed  with 
auspicious  bodily  marks. .  .  .  For  the  first  marriage  of  twice-born  men 
wives  of  equal  caste  are  recommended ;  but  for  those  who  through  desire 
•proceed  to  marry  again,  the  following  females,  chosen  according  to  the 
direct  order  of  the  castes,  are  most  approved.  It  is  declared  that  a  Sudra 
woman  alone  can  be  the  wife  of  a  Sudra,  she  and  one  of  his  own  caste 
the  wives  of  a  Vaisya,  those  two  and  one  of  his  own  caste  the  wives  of  a 
Kshatriya,  those  three  and  one  of  his  own  caste  the  wives  of  a  Brahmana. 
A  Sudra  woman  is  not  mentioned  even  in  any  ancient  story  as  the  first 
wife  of  a  Brahmana  or  of  a  Kshatriya,  though  they  lived  in  the  greatest 
distress.  Twice-born  men  who,  in  their  folly,  wed  wives  of  the  low  Sudra 
caste,  soon  degrade  their  famiUes  and  their  children  to  the  state  of  Sudras. 
Ihid.  vol.  XXV.  pp.  75,  77,  78. 

The  expression  "  twice-born  men  "  in  the  above  passage  needs 
explanation ;  it  means  all  belonging  to  the  three  upper  castes.  To 
use  another  phrase,  these  are  the  "  initiated  "  ones ;  the  initiation 
being  the  second  birth,  outwardly  manifested  by  the  tying  of 
the  sacred  girdle  about  the  loins,  after  instruction  in  the  Vedas^ 
It  will  be  seen  that  intermixture  of  castes  through  marriage  is  not 
an  impossibility  ;  and  in  the  tenth  book  of  the  Laws  of  Manu 
names  are  given  to  the  progeny  of  male  and  female  differing  in 
caste  ;    but  it  is  not  necessary  to  enter  upon  these  details  here. 

On  the  whole,  the  permanence  of  the  caste  system  was  in- 
sured ;  the  guarantee  of  it  lay  partly  in  the  conservative  disposi- 
tion of  the  Hindus,  partly  in  the  natural  power  of  an  aristocratic 
government — the  most  stable,  where  it  has  really  entered  into 
possession,  of  all  governments. 

Beyond  all  the  other  aristocratic  tendencies  of  the  caste 
system  was  its  exaltation  of  the  highest  caste,  the  Brahmins  (or 
Brahmanas).  Kings  were  by  virtue  of  their  office  of  the  second 
caste,  the  Kshatriyas^  ;  and  how  greatly  a  Brahmin  surpassed 
a  king  in  dignity  will  be  seen  by  the  following  extract  from  the 
Laws  (VIII.  37,  38)  : 

When  a  learned  Brahmana  has  found  treasure,  deposited  in  former 
times,  he  may  take  even  the  whole  of  it  ;  for  he  is  master  of  everything. 
When  the  king  finds  treasiu-e  of  old  concealed  in  the  ground,  let  him  give 
one  half  to  Brahmanas  and  place  the  other  half  in  his  treasiu-y.  Ihid. 
vol.  XXV.  p.  259. 

^  This  is  declared  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventh  book  of  the  Laws  of  Manu. 

4—2 


62  ^  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

Again,  while  corporal  punishment  may  be  inflicted  on  the 
other  three  castes,  a  Brahmin  is  never  oh  any  account  whatever 
to  be  subjected  to  it  {Laws,  vin.  124,  125).  Nor  may  a  Brahmin 
be  put  to  death  ;   for  we  read  {Laws,  vui.  380,  381)  : 

Let  him  (the  king)  never  slay  a  Brahmana,  though  he  have  conunitted 
all  possible  crimes  ;  let  him  banish  such  an  offender,  leaving  all  his 
property  to  him  and  his  body  unhurt.  No  greater  crime  is  known 
on  earth  than  slaying  a  Brahmana ;  a  king,  therefore,  must  not  even 
conceive  in  his  mind  the  thought  of  killing  a  Brahmana. 

The  Laws  of  Manu,  it  will  be  seen,  are  very  decidedly  respecters 
of  persons,  and  are  quite  without  shame  in  being  so.  Very 
rarely,  and  under  special  circumstances,  the  caste  distinction  may 
be  mitigated,  as  in  the  following  passage  : 

He  who  possesses  faith  may  receive  pure  learning  even  from  a  man 
of  lower  caste,  the  highest  law  even  from  the  lowest.. .  .It  is  prescribed 
that  in  times  of  distress  a  student  may  learn  the  Veda  from  one  who  is 
not  a  Brahmana  ;  and  that  he  shall  walk  behind  and  serve  such  a  teacher, 
as  long  as  the  instruction  lasts.     Laws,  ii.  238-241. 

The  king  (in  spite  of  his  being  only  of  the  second  caste,  a 
Kshatriya)  is  declared  in  the  Laws  (vii.  8)  to  be  "  a  great  deity 
in  liuman  form,"  and  the  rightful  inflicter  of  punishment ;  only 
he  must  "  daily  worship  aged  Brahmanas  who  know  the  Veda 
and  are  pure,"  and  also,  "  though  he  may  already  be  modest, 
constantly  learn  modesty  from  them  "  (vii.  38,  39). 

The  unequal  measure  of  justice  meted  out  to  the  respective 
castes  is  undoubtedly  the  most  radical  fault  in  Indian  law  and 
Indian  feeling,  but  it  is  not  the  only  fault.  What,  for  instance, 
is  to  be  said  of  the  following  injunctions  ? 

Whenever  the  death  of  a  Sudra,  of  a  Vaisya,  of  a  Kshatriya,  or  of 
a  Brahmana  would  be  caused  by  a  declaration  of  the  truth,  a  falsehood 
may  be  spoken  ;  for  such  falsehood  is  preferable  to  the  truth.  Such  wit- 
nesses must  offer  to  Sarasvati  oblations  of  boiled  rice  which  are  sacred 
to  tlie  goddess  of  speech,  thus  performing  the  best  penance  in  order  to 
expiate  the  guilt  of  their  falsehood.     Ibid.  viii.   104,  105. 

One  cannot  but  ask,  whether  such  a  permission,  or  rather 
command,  to  give  utterance  to  a  falsehood  confessedly  of  a  guilty 
character,  and  to  atone  for  it  by  a  sacrificial  offering,  must  not 
have  acted  injuriously  on  the  moral  rectitude  of  those  who  have 
accepted  the  Laws  of  Manu  as  a  divine  code  ;  though,  no  doubt, 
the  general  teaching  of  those  laws  is  strong  in  the  inculcation  of 
truthfulness. 

As  regards  cruelty,  we  must  not  expect  the  legislator  to  have 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  53 

been  beyond  his  age  ;  and  cruelty  was  hardly  reckoned  as  in- 
trinsically a  sin  in  those  times.  Enactments  prescribing  mutila- 
tion of  limbs  or  tongue,  or  cruel  burnings,  cannot  but  offend  us, 
but  too  great  censure  ought  not  to  be  bestowed  on  those  who 
ordained  such  punishments.  More  directly  responsible  was  the 
Hindu  legislator  for  his  law  of  penances  ;  of  these  it  will  be  enough 
to  say  that  some  are  childish  and  some  disgusting  ;  and  though 
"  to  take  pleasure  in  doing  good  to  cows  and  Brahmanas  "  {Laws, 
XI.  79)  is  a  form  of  penance  not  exactly  to  be  called  either  childish 
or  disgusting,  one  could  have  wished  that  some  recognition  had 
been  given  to  the  value  of  doing  good,  when  the  objects  of  it 
were  fellow  men  less  exalted  than  Brahmanas  ;  must  one  add,  than 
cows  ? 

It  is  but  moderate  merit  that  can  be  allowed  to  the  Laws  of 
Manu,  regarded  as  legislation  ;  but  when  regarded  as  counseUing 
rather  than  commanding,  as  persuading  to  sentiment  rather  than 
enforcing  action,  we  may  have  some  esteem  for  them,  in  spite 
of  their  defects.  Before  however  coming  to  this  side  of  Hindu 
law,  it  may  be  well  to  give  an  example  of  real  legislation  in  them, 
in  a  matter  in  which  caste  feehng  has  no  place.  Here  is  the  rule 
for  the  determination  of  a  disputed  boundary  (viii.  245-254)  : 

If  a  dispute  has  arisen  between  two  villages  concerning  a  boundary, 
the  king  shall  settle  the  limits  in  the  month  of  Gyaistha  (late  May  and 
early  June),  when  the  landmarks  are  most  distinctly  visible.  Let  him 
mark  the  boundaries  by  trees,  (e.g.)  Nyagrodhas,  Asvatthas,  Kimsukas, 
Cotton-trees,  Salas,  Palmyra  palms,  and  trees  with  milky  juice,  by  cliis- 
tering  shrubs,  bamboos  of  different  kinds,  Samis,  creepers,  and  raised 
mounds,  reeds,  thickets  of  Kubgaka  ;  thus  the  bovmdary  will  not  be 
forgotten.  Tanks,  wells,  cisterns,  and  fountains  should  be  built  where 
boundaries  meet,  as  well  as  temples  ;  and  as  he  will  see  that  through  men's 
ignorance  of  the  boundaries  trespasses  constantly  occur  in  the  world, 
let  him  cause  to  be  made  other  hidden  marks  for  boundaries,  stones, 
bones,  cow's  hair,  chaff,  ashes,  potsherds,  dry  cowdung,  bricks,  cinders, 
pebbles,  and  sand,  and  whatsoever  other  similar  things  the  earth  does 
not  corrode  even  after  a  long  time,  those  he  should  cause  to  be  buried 
where  one  boLUidary  joins  the  other.  By  these  signs,  by  long  continued 
possession,  and  by  constantly  flowing  streams  of  water,  the  king  shall 
ascertain  the  boundary  of  the  land  of  two  disputing  parties.  If  there 
be  a  doubt  even  on  inspection  of  the  marks,  the  settlement  of  a  dispute 
regarding  boundaries  shall  depend  on  witnesses.  The  witnesses,  giving 
evidence  regarding  a  boundary,  shall  be  examined  concerning  the  land- 
marks in  the  presence  of  the  crowd  of  the  villagers,  and  also  of  the  two 
litigants.     Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xxv.  pp.  298,  299. 

That  is  real  legislation,  and  on  a  point  of  some  importance. 
It  will  be  seen  that  the  land  is  communal,  each  village  having 


54  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [OH. 

its  own  portion  :  the  "  litigants  "  mentioned  at  the  end  are  merely 
the  champions  of  the  two  villages  between  which  the  dispute 
lies.  By  the  "  king  "  is  meant,  no  doubt,  the  great  noble,  or 
lord  of  the  manor,  who  is  supreme  in  that  part  of  the  country. 

The  following  passage  on  the  duties  of  a  Vaisya  or  husband- 
man (the  third  caste,  reckoned  as  "  twice-born"  along  with  the 
two  upper  castes)  is  partly  legislation,  partly  advice  and  counsel : 

After  a  Vaisya  has  received  the  sacraments  and  has  taken  a  wife,  he 
shall  be  always  attentive  to  the  business  whereby  he  may  subsist  and  to 
that  of  trading  cattle.... A  Vaisya  must  never  conceive  this  wish,  "I 
will  not  keep  cattle  "  ;  and  if  a  Vaisya  is  willing  to  keep  them,  they  must 
never  be  kept  by  men  of  other  castes.  A  Vaisya  must  know  the  resp>ective 
value  of  gems,  of  pearls,  of  coral,  of  metals,  of  cloth  m£uie  of  thread,  of 
perfiunes,  of  condiments.  He  must  be  acquainted  with  the  manner  of 
sowing  of  seeds,  and  with  the  good  and  bad  qualities  of  fields,  and  he  must 
perfectly  know  all  measures  and  weights.  Moreover,  the  excellence  and 
defects  of  commodities,  the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  different 
countries,  the  probable  profit  and  loss  on  merchandise,  and  the  means 
of  properly  rearing  cattle.  He  must  be  acquainted  with  the  proper  wages 
of  servants,  with  the  various  languages  of  men,  with  the  manner  of  keeping 
goods,  and  the  rules  of  purchase  and  sale.  Let  him  exert  himself  to 
the  utmost  to  increase  his  property  in  a  righteous  manner,  and  let  him 
zealously  give  food  to  all  created  beings.     Laws,  ix.  326,  327-333. 

The  practical  instinct  in  the  above  passage  will  be  felt.  A  few 
more  distinctly  ethical  passages  may  be  quoted.  On  the  duty  of 
forgiveness  : 

A  king  who  desires  his  own  welfare,  must  always  forgive  litigants, 
infants,  aged  and  sick  men,  who  inveigh  against  him.     Ibid.  viii.  312. 

Women  receive  just  appreciation  in  the  following  maxim  : 

Where  women  are  honoiu-ed,  there  the  gods  are  pleased  ;  but  where 
they  are  not  honoured,  no  sacred  rite  yields  rewards.     Ibid.  iii.  56. 

Nor  less  in  the  following  : 

He  only  is  a  perfect  man  who  consists  of  three  persons  united,  his 
wife,  himself,  and  his  offspring  ;  thus  says  the  Veda,  and  learned  Bnih- 
manas  propoimd  this  maxim  likewise.  "  The  husband  is  declared  to 
be  one  with  the  wife."     Ibid.  ix.  45. 

One  cannot  deny  that  polygamy  must  have  stood  consider- 
ably in  the  way  of  this  last  maxim  ;  but  the  intention,  amid  all 
practical  defects,  must  be  honoured. 

Whatever  we  may  think  of  asceticism,  the  following  instruc- 
tions to  an  ascetic  may  meet  our  approval : 

Let  him  patiently  bear  hard  words,  let  him  not  insult  anybody,  and 
let  liim  not  become  anybody's  enemy  for  the  sake  of  this  perishable  body. 


n]  BABYLONIA,    EGYPT,    INDIA  55 

Against  an  angry  man  let  him  not  in  return  show  anger,  let  him  bless 
when  he  is  cursed,  and  let  him  not  utter  speech  devoid  of  truth.  Ibid. 
VI.  47,  48. 

The  following  maxim  declares  the  supremacy  and  importance 
of  conscience  : 

The  Soul  itself  is  the  witness  of  the  Soul,  and  the  Soul  is  the  refuge 
of  the  Soul ;  despise  not  thy  own  soul,  the  supreme  witness  of  men.  Ibid. 
VIII.  84. 

Such  maxims,  though  embedded  in  the  midst  of  much  inferior 
matter,  do  in  themselves  reach  a  singular  height  of  excellence. 
From  Indian  history  it  is  not  possible  to  illustrate  them,  for 
Indian  history  was  not  only  unwritten,  but  even  the  conception 
of  a  historical  record  had  not  been  reached  in  India  in  the  times 
of  which  I  have  been  speaking  ;  and  even  if  we  had  historical 
records,  the  real  morahty  of  a  people  is  one  of  the  last  things 
that  is  illustrated  in  formal  histories.  It  is  one  of  the  virtues 
of  poetry  that  it  brings  out  the  sentiments  and  character  of  a 
nation  in  a  degree  which  historians  find  it  difficult  to  rival  ;  and 
the  two  vast  epics  of  ancient  India,  the  Maha-bharata  and  the 
Ramayana,  while  of  hardly  any  value  as  narratives  of  material 
fact,  have,  amid  the  wildness  of  their  contents,  something  of  the 
human  touch.  Those  who  wish  to  see  this  exemplified  in  brief 
space,  may  look  to  the  Indian  Wisdom  of  Monier  Williams, 
and  read,  from  the  Ramayana,  the  affecting  story  of  the  accidental 
death  of  the  hermit's  son  through  the  arrow  of  king  Dasaratha  ; 
and  from  the  Maha-bharata,  the  tale  of  Satyavan  and  his  wife 
Savitri.  The  Maha-bharata  contains  that  wonderful  song,  the 
Bhagavad-gita,  which  will  be  found  translated  in  the  eighth 
volume  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East ;  a  song  in  which 
pantheistic  theory  is  mingled  with  ardent  devotion  to  the  Deity, 
even  to  the  incarnate  Deity  (for  as  such  Krishna,  who  speaks  the 
divine  word,  is  brought  before  us)  ;  a  song  in  which  all  passion 
and  all  desire  are  represented  as  shrivelling  up  before  the  imperious 
claim  of  duty  ;  and  this  claim  has  its  example  in  the  great  warrior 
Arjuna,  who  trembles  and  shrinks,  not  with  cowardly  reluctance, 
before  the  thought  of  kilhng  his  own  kinsmen  ranged  against 
him  in  the  field  of  battle,  and  is  told  that  such  reluctance  is  a 
sin.  The  Bhagavad-gita  is  probably  the  work  in  which  the 
original  Hindu  religion  reaches  the  highest  point  ;  concerning 
the  date  of  it  very  various  opinions  have  been  held.  On  this 
point  I  have  no  claim  to  an  opinion  ;  but  Mr  Telang  (the  trans- 
lator   of   the   Bhagavad-gita  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 


\^ 


6«  ANCIENT    RELIGION  [ch.  n 

and  himself  a  Hindu)  pleads  impressively  on  behalf  of  an  early 
date  ;  that  is,  a  date  earlier,  and  probably  a  good  deal  earlier, 
than  300  B.C. 

Let  me  close  this  portion  of  my  subject  by  quoting  from  the 
Upanishads  the  ideal  description  of  the  feelings  of  a  righteous 
soul,  just  before  it  passes  through  the  veil  of  death  : 

The  door  of  the  True  is  covered  with  a  golden  disk.  Open  that,  O 
P^ishan,  that  we  may  see  the  nature  of  the  True.  O  Pillshan,  only  seer, 
Yama  (judge),  Siirya  (sun),  son  of  Prajapati,  spread  thy  rays  and  gather 
them  !  The  light  which  is  thy  fairest  form,  I  see  it.  I  am  what  he  is 
(viz.  the  person  in  the  sun).  Breath  to  air,  and  to  the  immoirtal !  Then 
this  my  body  ends  in  ashes.  Om !  Mind,  remember  !  Remember  thj' 
deeds  !  Mind,  remember  !  Remember  thy  deeds  !  Again,  lead  us  on 
to  wealth  (beatitude)  by  a  good  path,  thou,  O  God,  who  knowest  all 
things  !  Keep  far  from  us  crooked  evil,  and  we  shall  offer  thee  the 
fullest  praise  !     Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  i.  pp.  313,  314. 

The  famous  word  "  Om  "  in  the  above  passage  is  best  rendered 
by  "  Yea."  It  may  remind  us  of  "  the  Everlasting  Yea"  in  the 
sense  in  which  that  phrase  has  been  used  by  Carlyle  ;  a  phrase 
indicating  the  highest  law,  the  highest  blessedness  ;  a  supreme 
state,  higher  than  which  is  nothing  conceivable. 


CHAPTER   III 

INDIA   CONTINUED  :    SIDDARTHA   THE   BUDDHA 

^X^^When  a  form  of  religion  has  lasted  for  many  ages,  and  ha!^^^ 
been  developed  in  many  various  ways,  rising  sometimes  to  great 
>f     heights  of  self-denying  virtue,  but  stained  at  other  times  by  the 
sins  and  infirmities  which  belong  to  human  nature,  it  is  then  to 

■^  be  expected  that  attempts  should,  in  one  quarter  or  another, 
be  made  to  reform  it,  to  amend  its  faults,  and  to  gather  all  the 
good  that  is  in  it  into  a  new  combination,  and  very  hkely  with 
a  new  centre. 

The  reHgion  of  ancient  India,  which  I  described  in  the  fore- 
going chapter,  was  one  that  peculiarly  called  for  reform.  It 
was  a  vahant  ejffort  to  attain  the  true  touch,  whereby  an  invisible 
world  might  be  revealed  to  us  ;  but  experience  did  not  bear  any 
clear  witness  that  it  had  succeeded.  A  strenuous  asceticism  had 
been  the  instrument  on  which  it  chiefly  relied  ;  but  also,  a  con- 
formity to  ancient  rule,  an  adherence  to  an  estabUshed  order 
of  society,  in  which  the  ranks  were  rigidly  divided  and  kept 
apart ;  these  were  the  characteristics  of  personal  and  social  life 
that  had  resulted  from  the  simple  habits  and  natural  religion  of 
the  early  Aryans,  when  they  quitted  the  high  tablelands  of  Iran 
and  descended  into  the  burning  plains  to  the  south  of  the  Hima- 
layan range.  We  must  not  too  much  find  fault  with  their  failure, 
which  had,  it  will  have  been  seen,  its  redeeming  points  ;  but  the 
great  and  famous  attempt  to  reform  it  which  was  made  either 
in  the  sixth  or  fifth  century  before  Christ  (the  date  is  uncertain, 
as  generally  in  Indian  history)  deserves  even  more  of  our  attention 
than  the  original  Hindu  religion.  At  the  period  just  mentioned 
a  spirit  of  reform  was  in  the  air  ;  and  though  obscure  compared 
with  Buddhism,  the  system  of  Jainism  arose  about  the  same  time, 
and  endeavoured  to  make  benevolence,  conscientiousness,   and 

^  human  reason  supreme  in  the  ordering  of  men's  hves,  as  against 


against   ^ 


68  INDIA  CONTINUED :  [oh. 

caste.  Jainism  still  exists  ;  but  this  brief  mention  of  it  must 
here  be  suflBcient ;  and  to  the  great  reformer,  Siddartha  the 
Buddha,  I  now  come. 

Siddartha  ;  that  was  his  name  as  an  individual  person  ;  but 
he  is  also  called  by  his  family  name  of  Gautama  or  Gotaraa  ; 
and  again  he  is  called  Sakyamuni,  the  saint  of  the  Sakya  race  ; 
and  lastly,  Buddha,  the  EnUghtened  One.  Let  me  be  permitted 
to  call  him  Buddha  ;  for  that  is  the  name  by  which,  even  if  not 
so  intrinsically  correct,  he  wiU  best  be  recognised  by  the  world 
of  to-day. 

If  we  desire  to  understand  ^iiddhism,  we  must  remember 
(as  has  been  already  said)  that  it  was  a  purification  of  the  religion 
of  the  ancient  Huidua^^fir^rahminism  as  it  maylairlyTe^alled  ; 
a  puilflcSfion  made_by_jL_per86n  ol^extraordinary^  goodness  and 
flg^^lnean  in^llectual  powe^^  TTie  "TJpanishads,  which  are^he 
intellectual  core  of  Brahminism,  are  also ^Ilife  Immediate  ante- 
cedent of  BuddHism"J^and  IhFlkinship  is  manifested  alike  in  the 
gentleness  of  temperament  which  pervades  both,  and  in  the  sort 
of  ideal  aim  which  they  prescribe  for  mankind  at  large  ;  although 
in  respect  of  this  ideal  aim,  Buddhism  is  not  clearer  but  more 
obscure  than  the  Upanishads.  The  idea  of  absorption  into  the 
Absolute  Infinite  Being  has  more  apparent  intelligibility  than 
the  Buddhist  Nirvana  ;  I  am  not  saying  that  it  is  nearer  the 
truth. 

While  we  bear  in  mind  the^jistoricaJLdescent  of  Buddhism 
from  the  Brahmin  religion,  we  must  also  note  the  important  fact 
tliat  Siddartha  the TBuddha^sprang  from  the  warrior  caste  of  the 

fan  HinduSjtheTCsha^iyaa,  jtnd  that  this  warrior  caste  had 
in  ancifiHOays  lost  their  natural  supremacy  through  the  influence 
(partly  deserved,  but  partly  factitious  and  false)  of  the  Brahmin 
priesthood.  Hence,  notwithstanding  the  gentleness  and  humility 
of  Buddha  himself,  he  was  likely  for  personal  as  well  as  for  general 
reasons  to  be  opposed  to  the  caste  system  ;  and  similarly  the 
great  system  of  sacrificial  observances,  which  the  Brahmins  had 
elaborated  in  no  slight  degree  for  their  own  exaltation,  would 
[have  no  attraction  for  him.  He  did,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  oppose 
both  the  caste  system  and  all  sacrifices  which  implied  the  ex- 
tinction of  life,  even  of  vegetable  life.  Yet  we  should  be  wrong 
if  we  supposed  that  he  made  open  war  against  either  of  these 
points  of  practice,  or  again.st  any  part  of  the  Brahmin  religion. 
He  stood,  in  the  quietest  manner,  as  one  independent  of  all  that 
he  saw  around  him  ;   for  though  he  was  in  a  true  sense  formed  by 


ni]  SIDDARTHA  THE  BUDDHA  59 

the  world  in  which  he  lived  (as  we  all  must  be),  and  therefore 
formed  by  the  Brahmin  reUgion,  he  chose  for  himself  what  out 
of  that  rehgioiEhe^ would  accepluand  what  hejgonld  not  a,p.p.ept ; 
and  to  others  he  allowed  the  same^ liberty  of  choice.  So  tolerant 
a  rehgion  as  the  Buddhist  religion  has  never  appeared  among 
men.  But  this  did  not  mean  that  Buddha  was  indifferent  in 
regard  to  behef .  He  was  truly  anxious  to  convert  the  world  ; 
moreover,  he  was  a  singularly  precise  thinker,  where  precision 
was  possible.  He  ventured  on  some  points  on  which  precision 
was  not  possible  ;  nor  are  we  always  certain  of  his  exact  relation 
to  the  elder  doctrines. 

While  the  debt  of  Buddha  to  Brahminism  must  be  acknow- 
ledged, his  personal  character  was  yet  the  prime  force  which 
moulded  the  religion  of  which  he  was  the  first  propagator.  The 
accounts  ofhrsTife  that  have  reached  us  are  mingled  wiffi  fable, 
a§~was"CBrfarri  to  be  the  case  m  an  age  and  couiiti^  in  which  the 
art  of  writing  was  of  recent  introduction,  and  in  which  the  exer- 
cise of  imagination  was  one  of  the  highest  pleasures  ;  but  in  all 
essential  respects  the  account  of  him  which  we  have  received  is 
quite  natural  and  probable.  Born  as  the  son  of  a  warlike  chief, 
in  the  town  of  Kapilavatthu,  in  the  north  of  India,  almost  within 
sight  of  the  Himalayas,  and  (as  seems  the  best  opinion)  shortly 
after  the  year  500  B.C.,  he  Hved  as  other  men  do  tUl  after  attaining 
manhood  ;  he  married  a  wife,  and  an  infant  son  was  born  to  him. 
Then,  from  causes  which  are  but  imperfectly  sketched  in  the  tra- 
ditions, a  sense  of  the  world's  misery  fell  upon  him.  It  is  said 
that  specific  instances  of  misery  and  death  were  the  moving 
cause  of  his  altered  temper  ;  but  the  manner  in  which  this  is  told 
is  legendary,  and  the  history  of  his  early  mental  development  is 
reaUy  unknown  to  us.  "~But  when  this  crisis  came,  he  fled  from 
his  home,  resolved  upon  intense  meditation,  in  order  if  possible 
to  discover  a  remedy  for  the  sorrow  of  which  the  world  is  full, 
the  cause  of  which  seemed  to  him  to  lie  in  the  disposition  of  the 
hearts  of  men.  In  such  a  conviction  we  cannot  but  see  an  effect 
of  that  introspective  philosophy  which  had  been  the  fruit  of  the 
thought  of  the  Aryan  race  in  India  ;  outward  remedies  were 
to  Buddha  of  quite  inferior  value,  just  as  they  were  to  Yajiia- 
valkya. 

The  best  account  of  the  thoughts  of  Buddha  at  this  crisis  is 
to  be  found  in  the  book  caUed  the  "  Buddha-Karita,"  by  Asva- 
ghosha  ;  a  work  centuries  later  than  Buddha  and  full  of  imagina- 
tive exaggerations,  but  one  which  may  well  have  preserved  true 


60  INDIA  CONTINUED:  [oh. 

traditions  of  his  growth  in  feeling  and  thought.  Here  is  what 
Buddha  is  reported  to  have  said  to  the  monarch  of  the  Magadhas, 
who  had  remonstrated  with  him  on  his  abandonment  of  his  home 
(I  quote  from  the  translation  by  Co  well,  Sacred  Books  of  Die 
East,  vol.  XLix.  pp.   Ill  sqq.)  : 

This  is  not  to  be  called  a  strange  thing, . .  .  that  by  thee  of  pure  con- 
duct, O  lover  of  thy  friends,  this  line  of  conduct  should  be  adopted  towards 
him  who  stands  as  one  of  thy  friends. ...  I  will  meet  thee  courteously 
with  simple  friendship  ;  I  would  not  utter  aught  else  in  my  reply.  I, 
having  experienced  the  fear  of  old  age  and  death,  fly  to  this  path  of  religion 
in  my  desire  for  liberation  ;  leaving  behind  my  dear  kindred  with  tears 
in  their  faces,  still  more  then  those  pleasures  which  are  the  causes  of  evil. 
I  am  not  so  afraid  even  of  serpents  nor  of  thunderbolts  falling  from  heaven, 
nor  of  flames  blown  together  by  the  wind,  as  I  am  afraid  of  these  worldly 
objects.  These  transient  pleasures,  the  robbers  of  our  happiness  and  oiu* 
wealth,  and  which  float  empty  and  like  illusions  through  the  world,  in- 
fatuate men's  minds  even  when  they  are  only  hoped  for,  still  more  when 
they  take  up  their  abode  in  the  soul..  .  .Deer  are  lured  to  their  destruc- 
tion by  songs,  insects  for  the  sake  of  the  brightness  fly  into  the  fire,  the 
fish  greedy  for  the  flesh  swallows  the  iron  hook,  therefore  worldly  objects 
produce  misery  as  their  end.  As  for  the  common  opinion,  •'  pleasures 
are  enjoyments,"  none  of  them  when  examined  are  worthy  of  being  enjoyed; 
fine  garments  and  the  rest  are  only  the  accessories  of  things,  they  are  to 
be  regarded  as  merely  the  remedies  for  pain.  Water  is  desired  for  allaying 
thirst  ;  food  in  the  same  way  for  removing  hunger  ;  a  house  for  keeping 
off  the  wind,  the  heat  of  the  sun,  and  the  rain  ;  and  dress  for  keeping  off 
the  cold  and  to  cover  one's  nakedness.  So  too  a  bed  is  for  removing 
drowsiness  ;  a  carriage  for  remedying  the  fatigue  of  a  journey  ;  a  seat 
for  alleviating  the  pain  of  standing  ;  so  bathing  as  a  means  for  washing, 
health,  and  strength.  External  objects  therefore  are  to  human  beings 
means  for  remedying  pain,  not  in  themselves  sources  of  enjoyment  ;  what 
wise  man  would  allow  that  he  enjoys  those  delights  which  are  onlj'  used 
Q»  remedial  ? . . .  I  have  come  here  with  a  wish  to  see  next  the  seer  Arada 
who  proclaims  liberation  ;  I  start  this  very  day — happiness  be  to  thee, 
O  king  ;  forgive  my  words  which  may  seem  harsh,  through  their  absolute 
freedom  from  passion.     Buddha -Karita,  book  xi. 

The  important  point  will  be  observed  in  the  above  extract 
that  while  Buddha  did  not  regard  it  as  legitimate  to  pursue 
pleasure,  he  did  regard  it  as  legitimate  to  assuage  pain. 

It  is  true  that  it  may  be  held  that  the  above  passage  is  no 
proper  evidence  as  to  what  the  great  teacher's  final  view  was, 
since  Asvaghosha  attributes  to  him  these  sentiments  at  a  period 
when  he  had  not  received  that  enlightenment  which  caused  him 
to  take  to  himself  the  title  of  Buddha.  But  there  is  no  reason 
to  think  that  he  ever  changed  the  sentiments  expressed  above. 
"  Right  conduct  "  was  in  his  completed  system  of  ethics  one 
branch  of  the  "  noble  eightfold  path  "  for  men  ;    and  there  is 


m]  SIDDARTHA  THE  BUDDHA  61 

absolutely  nothing  recorded  of  him  which  should  lead  us  to  doubt 
that  the  alleviation  of  suffering  by  any  innocent  means  was 
included  by  him  in  his  conception  of  "  right  conduct,"  or  "  right 
action,"  during  the  whole  period  of  his  preaching.  In  fact,  the 
time  of  his  conversation  with  the  king  of  the  Magadhas,  from  which 
I  have  just  been  quoting,  was  the  time  in  all  his  Ufe  when  he  was 
most  hkely  to  have  disparaged  the  alleviation  of  suffering  as  a 
motive  ;  for  the  Brahmin  religion,  to  which  he  was  then  attached, 
^  regarded  voluntary  suffering  as  of  great  value.  If  then  Buddha 
would  at  this  period  have  had  men  devote  themselves  to  the 
alleviation  of  suffering,  much  more  would  he  have  given  this 
counsel  afterwards,  when  he  had  received  enlightenment.  (On 
the  other  hand,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  authenticity  of  the 
speech  just  recorded  is  made  somewhat  less  probable  by  the  very 
fact  that  it  so  much  coincides  with  what  we  know  to  have  been 
the  later,  as  distinguished  from  the  earlier,  conviction  of  Buddha.) 
But  Siddartha  (let  me  recur  once  more  here  to  his  personal 
name)  had  not  yet  received  enUghtenment,  had  not  yet  become 
"  Buddha,"  at  the  time  of  his  conversation  with  the  king  of  the 
Magadhas.  He  was  obedient  to  the  highest  reUgion  which  he 
knew,  the  religion  of  the  Brahmins  ;  for  though  he  was  not  of 
the  Brahmin  caste,  he  was  permitted  to  practise  that  asceticism 
which  the  Brahmins  regarded  as  the  highest  reUgion,  and  by  so 
doing  rendered  himself  the  equal  of  the  Brahmins  in  their  own 
estimation. 

For  a  period  of  six  years  after  leaving  the  king  of  the  Maga- 
dhas, Siddartha  practised  pure  asceticism  after  the  manner  of  the 
Yogis,  abstaining  from  all  outward  action,  and  joining  himself 
to  five  other  devotees  who  were  animated  by  the  same  purpose 
\  as  himself  ;  the  purpose,  namely,  of  finding  the  remedy  for  the 
V I  world's  huge  burden  of  sorrow.  It  must  be  remembered  that 
the  universal  belief  in  India  then  was  (as  in  the  main  it  is  stiU) 
that  the  burden  of  man's  sorrows  had  to  be  borne  during  many 
successive  lives,  until  that  crowning  moment  was  reached,  when 
each  individual  life  should  become  identified  with  the  Absolute 
Existence,  with  the  divine  Brahma.  Thus  Siddartha  and  his 
companions  were  endeavouring  to  escape  not  only  from  sorrow 
in  the  present  life,  but  from  the  burden  inherent  in  all  future 
lives  ;  and  the  means  prescribed  for  them  by  the  Brahmin  religion 
\  were  concentration  of  mind  and  voluntary  self-inflicted  pain, 
chiefly  it  would  seem  in  the  form  of  semi-starvation.  But  at 
last,  after  six  years,  Siddartha  gave  up  the  effort  which  he  felt 


62  INDIA  CONTINUED:  [CH. 

to  be  useless.     He  was  in  no  way  bettered  by  his  self-inflicted 
sufferings  ;    nor  was   the  burden  of  the   world's  sorrow   made 
lighter  by  them.     He  wandered  away  from  his  five  companions, 
and  at  last,  in  a  place  called  Bodhi-Gaya,  he  came  to  a  great 
fig-tree  and  sat  under  it.    Sitting  there,  he  became  enlightened  ;  he 
saw  in  a  moment  what  he  deemed  to  be  supreme  truth,  namely, 
\     that  the   way  of  escaping   sorrow  was  not   to   subject   oneself 
;   to  voluntary  sorrow,  but  to  restrain  the  instincts  of  pleasure- 
^    i  seeking  desire.     This  was  the  great  moment  of  the  liberation 
: '     I    of  Siddartha's  innermost  being  ;    now  he  was  truly  Buddha  ; 
'       j    now  he  was  awakened  to  the  reahty  ;    and  the  liberation  was 
not  merely  of  himself,  but  from  himself.     With  instantaneous 
,    prophetic  glance  he  looked  forward  to  that  time  when  he  should 
1 1  enter  into  a  state  in  which  his  own  self  should  no  longer  exist  ; 
;l  the  state  called  by  him  Nirvana.     That  is  the  mystical  consum- 
?    mation  of  Buddhism  ;    a  consummation  which,  when  we  look 
upon  it  with  the  eye  of  the  ordinary  understanding,  appears 
cold,  barren,  meagre,  the  commonplace  conviction  of  men  who 
are  wholly  devoid  of  religious  faith  ;   but  which  to  Buddha  him- 
self was  a  great  mysterious  conception,  deliverance  and  salvation. 
Let  me  leave  the  conception  of  Nirvana  in  its  mysteriousness, 
not  seeking  at  present  to  determine  what  measure  of  truth  it 
may  contain  (for  indeed  the  absolute  truth  is  beyond  all  power 
of  man  to  conceive),  but  acknowledging,  as  I  think  we  must 
acknowledge,  that   Buddha   himself   fell   short   on   one   side  of 
truth,    fell    short    of    the    recognition    of    creative    power    as 
not  only  the  prime  source  of  this  phenomenal  world,  but  also 
a  power  whose  alliance  we  ourselves  must  seek,  and  to  partake 
in  which  is  our  highest  happiness.     "  To  be  blown  out,"  as  a 
candle,  is,  it  appears,  the  meaning  of  Nirvana  ;    and  to  accept 
this  as  our  ideal  is  not  in  the  long  run  salutary  for  us.     But  the 
full  mind  of  Buddha  is  not  easily  apprehensible  ;   it  will  be  best 
to  begin  by  noting  the  positive  side  of  his  teaching  as  to  this  life. 
Here,  in  the  treatise  called  the  "  Tevigga  Sutta,"  is  a  declaration, 
truly  magnificent,  of  what  every  sincere  Buddhist  ought  to  feel  ; 
and  it  is  what  we  must  conclude  that  Buddha  himself  actually 
did  feel,  for  it  is  a  declaration  that  lies  in  the  heart  and  essence 
of  Buddha's  creed  : 

He  lets  lii.s  mind  pervade  one  quarter  of  the  world  with  thouglits  of 
love,  and  so  the  second,  and  so  the  third,  and  so  the  fourth.  And  thus 
the  whole  wide  world,  above,  below,  around,  and  everywhere,  does  he 
continue  to  pervade  with  heart  of  Love,  far-reaching,  gro\v^l  great,  and 


in]  SIDDARTHA  THE  BUDDHA  63 

beyond  measure.  Just,  Vasettha,  as  a  mighty  trumpeter  makes  himself 
heard — and  that  without  difficiilty — in  all  the  four  directions  ;  even  so 
of  all  things  that  have  shape  or  life,  there  is  not  one  that  he  passes  by  or 
leaves  aside,  but  regards  them  all  with  mind  set  free,  and  deep-felt  love. 
Verily  this,  Vasettha,  is  the  waj?^  to  a  state  of  imion  with  Brahma.  And 
he  lets  his  mind  pervade  one  quarter  of  the  world  with  thoughts  of  pity, 
sympathy,  and  equanimity,  and  so  the  second,  and  so  the  third,  and  so 
the  fourth.  And  thus  the  whole  wide  world,  above,  below,  around,  and 
everywhere,  does  he  continue  to  pervade  with  heart  of  pity,  sympathy, 
and  equanimity,  far-reaching,  grown  great,  and  beyond  measure.  Sacred 
Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xi.  p.  201. 

That  is  a  passage  which  brings  into  clear  Ught  the  advance 
which  Buddha  made  on  the  Brahmin  rehgion  that  had  preceded 
him.  It  cannot  be  said  that  either  the  Upanishads,  or  the  Laws 
of  Manu.  or  the  Bhagavad-gita,  place  love  in  its  true,  high,  and 
important  position  as  regulative  of  the  acts  of  man  ;  they  treat 
of  the  duties  involved  in  the  particular  relations  of  life,  and  the 
general  sense  of  duty  and  self-denial  is  expressed  in  them  very 
strongly  ;  but  love,  which  alone  gives  full  meaning  both  to  duty 
and  to  self-denial,  is  not  in  them  fully  and  adequately  appre- 
hended. By  Buddha,  and  by  him  first,  it  was  fully  and  ade- 
quately apprehended.  No  one  will  dispute  this  who  considers 
the  full  sum  of  the  teaching  which  has  descended  from  him  ;  at 
the  same  time  it  is  impossible  to  keep  the  touch  of  self-regarding 
feehng  out  of  the  efforts  of  any  great  soul.  We  find  it  in  such 
an  expression  as  this,  attributed  to  Buddha  in  the  Sutta-Nipata 
(III.  2,  16)  : 

Woe  upon  life  in  this  world  ;  death  in  battle  is  better  for  me  than 
that  I  should  live  defeated.     Ibid.  vol.  x.  part  ii.  p.   71. 

Nor  is  it  to  be  denied  that  the  "  liberation  "  which  Buddha 
sought  was  in  a  certain  degree  a  personal  dehverance  ;  but  it 
must  not  be  thought  of  as  narrowly  personal.  The  tradition  is 
(and  it  may  be  a  true  tradition),  that  after  he  had  received  that 
enlightenment  which  I  have  just  been  describing,  the  temptation 
came  upon  him  to  accept  deliverance  as  a  mere  personal  gain 
for  himself  alone,  and  to  seek  death  at  once,  as  securing  him  an 
immediate  entrance  into  the  final  blessed  state.  This  would 
indeed  have  been  a  narrowly  personal  interpretation  of  the 
dehverance  which  he  sought  ;  but  the  temptation  was  rejected 
by  him.  Buddha  is  said  himself  to  have  given  the  account  of 
this  temptation,  shortly  before  his  death,  to  his  disciple  Ananda 
(see  The  Book  of  the  Great  Decease,  iii.  43,  44,  in  the  eleventh 
volume  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East).     We  may  well  beheve 


64  INDIA  CONTINUED:  [ch. 

that  temptations  came  upon  him  shortly  after  the  great  crisis 
in  his  life  ;  a  new  position  must  always  be  open  to  new  dangers. 
Temptations  to  follow  after  power  and  pleasures  are  also  said 
to  have  assailed  him^  ;  and  it  must  be  understood  that  in  all 
cases  a  personal  tempter,  M&ra,  is  introduced  as  pressing  the 
temptation.  It  is  impossible  to  think  of  the  works  from  which 
I  am  quoting  as  historical  in  all  their  details  ;  but  the  general 
current  of  the  narrative  (especially  in  the  Book  of  the  Great 
Decease)  is  not  improbable  ;  and  that  some  trustwori^hy  par- 
ticulars of  the  hfe  of  Buddha  would  be  preserved  by  tradition 
we  may  naturally  beheve.  The  tree  under  which  he  was  sitting 
when  he  received  his  enlightenment  became  famous  in  after 
time  ;  and  though  it  is  impossible  to  think  that  it  still  exists, 
an  ancient  tree  is  to  be  seen  in  the  traditional  locality  2. 

We  must  of  course  distinguish  between  Buddha's  personal 
acceptance  of  his  doctrine  and  his  resolve  to  preach  it  to  others  ; 
the  resolve  marked  a  far  more  decisive  severance  from  his  previous 
life  as  an  ascetic  than  the  mere  acceptance  of  the  new  doctrine 
had  done.  As  an  ascetic  on  the  lines  of  the  Brahmin  religion, 
he  did  not  preach  at  all ;  his  aim  was  by  solitary  exercises  to 
attain  absorption  into  the  Deity.  His  new  doctrine,  taking  love 
as  its  animating  principle  in  a  degree  far  exceeding  what  had  ap- 
peared in  his  previous  efforts,  was  naturally  accompanied  by  the 
resolution  to  make  others  participant  in  his  own  enlightenment. 

The  first  converts  of  Buddha  were  the  five  ascetics  whose 

company  he  had  left  when  he  had  become  dissatisfied  with  the 

doctrine  and  practice  of  Brahminism.     It  is  related  {Mahdvagga, 

I.  67)3  that  when  he  approached  them  in  the  lofty  ardour  of  a 

newly  inspired  seer,  they  determined  to  treat  him  with  silent 

contempt  as  a  recreant  ;    but  overcome  by  his  personal  dignity, 

were  unable  to  maintain  their  determination,  and  inquired  what 

his  new  design  might  be.     Let  me  quote  part  of  his  answer  to 

them  ;    and  it  will  perhaps  be  most  intelligible  if  I  quote  it  in 

Oldenberg's  translation,  given  in  the  valuable  and  learned  work 

just  mentioned  : 

Then  the  Exalted  One  spake  to  the  five  euscetics,  saying  "There  are 
two  extremes,  O  monks,  from  which  he  who  leads  a  religious  life  must 
abstain.  What  are  those  two  extremes  ?  One  is  a  life  of  pleasure, 
devoted    to   desire   and   enjoyment :     that   is   base,   ignoble,   unspiritual, 

*  Seo  tho  Buddha- Karita  of  Asvaghosha,  book  xin,  in  the  49th  volume  of  Sacred 
Books  of  the  EaM. 

*  Sec  Cunnin^iharn,  Archce/jlogical  Reports,  vol.  I.  p.  5,  quoted  by  Oldenbcrg  on 
p.  108  of  his  Buddha. 

*  See  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xiii.  p.  02. 


ni]  SIDDARTHA  THE  BUDDHA  66 

s;;  imworthy,  unreal.  The  other  is  a  life  of  mortification  ;  it  is  gloomy, 
xmworthy,  unreal.  The  Perfect  One,  O  monks,  is  removed  from  both 
these  extremes  and  has  discovered  the  way  which  lies  between  them, 
the  middle  way  which  enlightens  the  eyes,  enhghtens  the  mind,  which 
leads  to  rest,  to  knowledge,  to  enlightenment,  to  Nirvana.  And  what, 
O  monks,  is  the  middle  way,  which  the  Perfect  One  has  discovered,  which 
enhghtens  the  eye  and  enlightens  the  spirit,  which  leads  to  rest,  to  know- 
ledge, to  enlightenment,  to  Nirvana  ?  It  is  this  sacred,  eightfold  path, 
jas  it  is  called  ;  Right  Faith,  Right  Resolve,  Right  Speech,  Right  Action, 
y  >}' Right  Living,  Right  Effort,  Right  Thought,  Right  Self  concentration. 
This,  O  monks,  is  the  middle  way,  which  the  Perfect  One  has  discovered, 
which  enlightens  the  eye  and  enlightens  the  spirit,  which  leads  to  rest, 
to  knowledge,  to  enlightenment,  to  Nirvana. 

"  This,  O  monks,  is  the  sacred  truth  of  suffering  ;    Birth  is  suffering, 

■  ..Nj  old  age  is  suffering,  sickness  is  suffering,  death  is  suffering,  to  be  united 

^*'  i  J   with  the  unloved  is  suffering,  to  be  separated  from  the  loved  is  suffering, 

v  not  to  obtain  what  one  desires  is  suffering,  in  short  the  fivefold  clinging 

(to  the  earthly)  is  suffering. 

"  This,  O  monks,  is  the  sacred  truth  of  the  origin  of  suffering  ;    it  is 
the  thirst  (for  being),  which  leads  from  birth  to  birth,  together  with  lust 
and  desire,  which  finds  gratification  here  and  there  :    the  thirst  for  plea- 
■>    sures,  the  thirst  for  being,  the  thirst  for  power. 

"  This,  O  monks,  is  the  sacred  truth  of  the  extinction  of  suffering  ; 
the  extinction  of  this  thirst  by  the  complete  annihilation  of  desire,  letting 
■^    it  go,  expelhng  it,  separating  oneself  from  it,  giving  it  no  room. 

"  This,  O  monks,  is  the  sacred  truth  of  the  path  which  leads  to  the 

extinction  of  suffering  ;    it  is  this  sacred,  eightfold  path,  to  wit ;    Right 

^         Faith,  Right  Resolve,  Right  Speech,  Right  Action,  Right  Living,  Right 

Effort,  Right  Thought,  Right   Self  concentration."     Oldenberg's  Buddha 

(translated  by  William  Hoey,  M.A.,  pp.  127-8). 

In  the  above  passage  the  Buddhist  conceptions  of  Hfe  and 
duty  are  brought  before  us  in  a  manner  pecuHarly  clear  and 
suited  to  critical  examination.  Nirvana  is  mentioned,  but  we 
are  not  tied  down  to  the  mere  question  whether  Nirvana  is  or 
is  not  a  worthy  end  of  human  endeavour  ;  we  are  presented 
with  a  problem  of  everyday  life,  whether  we  ought  to  follow 
our  desires  or  to  reject  them.  The  contention  of  Buddha, 
'  broadly  speaking,  is  that  we  ought  to  reject  them  and  not  to 
follow  them.  We  must  not  interpret  this  sajdng  so  rigidly  as 
to  think  that  Buddha  would  have  dissuaded  from  the  use 
of  active  means  to  relieve  pain ;  but  clearly  he  discouraged 
the  positive  search  after  things  pleasurable.  Was  he  right 
or  not  ? 

Let  us  consider  how  far  we  ourselves  should  go  in  affirming 
the  pursuit  of  pleasure,  or  the  following  of  strong  desire,  to  be 
wrong.     We  should  affirm  it  to  be  wrong — 

(1)  If  the  pursuit  was  injurious  to  vital  energy. 

M.  D.A.  5 


66  INDIA  CONTINUED:  [oh. 

(2)  If  it  tended  to  the  injury  of  affectionate  intercourse  with 
others. 

(3)  If  it  occupied  time  which  ought  to  be  occupied  with  the 
discharge  of  plain  duties. 

In  all  these  cases  we  should  agree  with  Buddha  that  the 
search  after  things  pleasurable  is  wrong.  But  it  need  scarcely  be 
said  that  admissions  of  so  limited  a  character  would  have  been 
very  far  from  satisfying  the  great  Indian  thinker  ;  and  indeed 
the  point  of  view  which  he  initially  took  was  one  from  which 
desire  and  pleasure  appeared  things  much  more  radically  harm- 
ful than  we  in  our  ordinary  thinkings  are  accustomed  to  esteem 
them.  Let  us  try  and  approximate,  as  far  as  we  can,  to  his 
initial  starting  point.  Perhaps  the  following  stanza,  attributed 
to  him  in  the  Mahd-Sudassana  Sutta  (vol.  xi.  p.  289  of  the  Sacred 
Books  of  the  East)  will  give  an  idea  of  his  primary  feeling  : 

'  How  transient  axe  all  component  things  ! 
Growth  is  their  nature  and  decay  ; 
They  are  produced,  they  are  dissolved  again  ; 
And  then  is  best,  when  they  have  sunk  to  rest  ! 

"  Component  things,"  in  this  stanza,  mean  especially  and 
primarily  living  organisms  ;  and  it  is  an  obvious  fact  that  all 
living  organisms  on  earth,  as  they  originate  in  birth,  so  after  a 
time  decay  in  death.  To  Buddha,  the  fact  that  they  decayed 
appeared  a  token  and  evidence  of  error  in  their  origination. 
Moreover,  as  Buddha  fully  accepted  the  doctrine  of  transmigra- 
tion of  souls,  previously  taught  in  the  Brahmin  religion,  the 
error  which  led  to  the  birth  of  any  creature  was  regarded  by  him 
as  an  error  inherited  from  some  previous  existence.  A  human 
being  who  led  a  perfect  life  would  never  be  born  again  into 
terrestrial  life  ;  a  human  being  who  led  a  sinful  life  would  by  the 
fact  of  his  wrong  propensities  be  led  into  renewed  life  of  an 
earthly  kind  ;  he  would  be  boni  again.  All  terrestrial  life  was 
looked  upon  by  Buddha  as  a  failure  ;  that  seemed  to  him  quite 
obvious  ;  the  fleeting  pleasures  which  men  valued  were  of  no 
account  ;  the  final  outcome  of  it  was  always  decay,  decay,  decay, 
over  and  over  and  over  again.  That  we  should  get  out  of  it, 
be  delivered  from  it,  finally  and  absolutely,  was  in  his  view  the 
right  aim  of  man.  The  "  error  "  in  which  it  originated  he  called 
simply  "  ignorance  "  ;  the  man  who  had  died  implicated  in 
passions  knew  not  what  he  did  and  pressed  forward  towards  a 
renewed  birth,  a  renewed  life  with  all  its  pains  and  its  ultimate 
ending  in  decay  and  death.     The  grievous  unsightliness  of  the 


m]  SIDDARTHA  THE   BUDDHA  67 

whole  sequence,  the  perpetual  trial  and  perpetual  failure,  ap- 
peared to  Buddha  to  demand  from  aU  wise  men  the  single-minded 
resolve  to  escape  from  it.  But  into  what  sphere  should  man 
escape  ?     What  was  the  good  that  he  should  seek  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question,  in  Buddha's  mind,  lay  in  the 
word  Nirvana.  Without  trying  to  elucidate  the  entire  meaning 
of  that  word,  it  wiU  make  Buddha's  course  of  thought  more 
intelligible  if  I  quote  here  a  chapter  (the  15th)  from  the  Dhamma- 
pada  ;  not  that  it  is  necessarily  Buddha's  own  composition,  but 
it  expresses  his  sentiment : 

Let  us  live  happily  then,  not  hating  those  who  hate  us  !  among 
men  who  hate  us  let  us  dwell  free  from  hatred  ! 

Let  us  live  happily  then,  free  from  ailments  among  the  aiUng ! 
among  men  who  are  ailing  let  us  dwell  free  from  ailments  ! 

Let  us  live  happily  then,  free  from  greed  among  the  greedy  !  among 
men  who  are  greedy  let  xis  dwell  free  from  greed  ! 

Let  us  dwell  happily  then,  though  we  call  nothing  our  own  !  We 
shall  be  like  the  bright  gods,  feeding  on  happiness  ! 

Victory  breeds  hatred,  for  the  conquered  is  unhappy.  He  who  has 
given  up  both  victory  and  defeat,  he,  the  contented,  is  happy. 

There  is  no  fire  like  passion  ;  there  is  no  losing  throw  like  hatred  ; 
there  is  no  pain  like  this  body  ;   there  is  no  happiness  higher  than  rest. 

Hiinger  is  the  worst  of  diseases,  the  body  the  greatest  of  pains  ;  if 
one  know  this  truly,  that  is  Nirvana,  the  highest  happiness. 

Health  is  the  greatest  of  gifts,  contentedness  the  best  riches  ;  trust 
is  the  best  of  relationships.  Nirvana  the  highest  happiness. 

He  who  has  tasted  the  sweetness  of  solitude  and  tranquillity  is 
free  from  fear  and  free  from  sin,  while  he  tastes  the  sweetness  of  drinking 
in  the  law. 

The  sight  of  the  elect  is  good,  to  live  with  them  is  always  happiness  ; 
if  a  man  does  not  see  fools,  he  will  be  trxily  happy. 

He  who  walks  in  the  company  of  fools  suffers  a  long  way  ;  company 
with  fools,  as  with  an  enemy,  is  always  painful  ;  company  with  the  wise 
is  pleasure,  Hke  meeting  with  kinsfolk. 

Therefore  one  ought  to  follow  the  wise,  the  intelligent,  the  learned, 
the  much  endiu-ing,  the  dutiful,  the  elect  ;  one  ought  to  follow  a  good  and 
wise  man  as  the  moon  follows  the  path  of  the  stars.  Sacred  Books  of  the 
East,  vol.  X. 

No  one  can  deny  that  the  above  verses  contain  deep  truth. 
The  evils  of  conflict  and  hatred,  the  happiness  of  wise  converse, 
of  a  tranquil  mind,  and  of  adherence  to  law,  are  set  forth  with 
a  conviction  that  we  ourselves  may  share.  Moreover,  in  such 
an  expression  as  "  The  sight  of  the  elect  is  good,  to  live  with 
them  is  always  happiness,"  a  positive  element  of  rightful  happi- 
ness is  affirmed,  from  which  we  may  fairly  infer  that  something  of 
the  same  kind  is  supposed  present  in  Nirvana  itself. 

5—2 


68  INDIA   CONTINUED:  [ch. 

I  am  not  indeed  saying  that  every  expression  in  the  above 
extract  is  perfect.  We  may  demur  to  the  phrase,  "  the  body  is 
the  greatest  of  pains,"  not  on  the  ground  of  the  transient  plea- 
sures which  our  body  is  capable  of  experiencing,  but  because 
both  the  pleasures  and  pains  of  the  body  are  to  a  noble  spirit 
capable  of  suggesting  noble  spiritual  thoughts,  not  indiscrimin- 
ately or  as  a  matter  of  course,  but  when  accepted  with  due 
regard  to  all  the  consequences  of  action. 

One  cannot  help,  in  considering  such  passages  as  those  which 
I  have  just  quoted,  being  divided  between  admiration  of  the 
self-denial  and  deep  affection  which  they  inculcate,  and  regret 
that  an  undervaluing  of  outward  action  is  implied  in  them  ; 
that  the  positive  moulding  of  the  worid  into  new  external  forms 
is  discouraged  rather  than  encouraged.  The  Buddhist  is  taught 
to  exert  himself  in  his  inward  thoughts  and  feelings,  but  he  is 
led  to  refrain  from  adventurous  action  in  the  external  world  ; 

ihis  task  is  rather  to  withdraw  himself  from,  than  to  govern, 
material  things.  A  teaching  which  on  one  side  reaches  a  rare 
perfection  is  on  another  side  cramped  and  repressed  ;  this  is, 
I  think,  a  fair  judgment  of  the  doctrine  of  Buddha.  In  saying 
I  so,  I  am  practically  denying  his  right  to  be  considered  the  supreme 
I  teacher  of  mankind  ;  but  one  of  the  highest  teachers  he  must 
always  be  considered.  Many  of  his  maxims  have  an  eternal 
freshness  and  profundity,  and  can  never  be  forgotten.  Let  me 
quote  again  from  the  Dhammapada.  the  treatise  which  perhaps 
of  all  others  most  represents  his  deepest  mind  : 

All  that  we  are  is  the  result  of  what  we  have  thought  ;  it  is  founded 
on  our  thoughts,  it  is  made  up  of  our  thoughts.  If  a  man  speaks  or  acts 
with  an  evil  thought,  pain  follows  him,  as  the  wheel  follows  the  foot  of 
the  ox  that  draws  the  carriage. 

All  that  we  are  is  the  result  of  what  we  have  thought ;  it  is  founded 
on  our  thoughts,  it  is  made  up  of  our  thoughts.  If  a  man  speaks  or  acts 
with  a  pure  thought,  happiness  follows  him,  like  a  shadow  that  never 
leaves  him. 

"  He  abused  me,  he  beat  me,  he  defeated  me,  he  robbed  me  " — in  those 
who  harbour  such  thoughts  hatred  will  never  cease. 

"He  abused  me,  he  beat  me,  he  defeated  me,  he  robbed  me" — in 
those  who  do  not  harboiu*  such  thoughts  hatred  will  cease. 

For  hatred  does  not  cease  by  hatred  at  any  time  ;  hatred  ceases  by 
the  absence'  of  hatred,  this  is  an  old  rule. 

He  who  lives  looking  for  pleasures  only,  his  senses  uncontrolled, 
immoderate  in  his  food,  idle,  and  weak,  Mara  (the  tempter)  will  certainly 
overtlirow  him,  as  the  wind  throws  down  a  weak  tree. 

1  I  rely  upon  Oldonbt-rg  [BwMha,  p.  25>3).  "  Ix)ve"  is  perhaps  too  ardent  a  word; 
"  absence  of  hatred  "  is  intended. 


Ill]  SIDDARTHA  THE   BUDDHA  69 

He  who  lives  without  looking  for  pleasiires,  his  senses  well  controlled, 
moderate  in  his  food,  faithful  and  strong,  him  Mara  will  certainly  not 
overthrow,  any  more  than  the  wind  throws  down  a  rocky  mountain. 

The  evildoer  mourns  in  this  world,  and  he  mourns  in  the  next ;  he 
mourns  in  both.  He  mourns  and  suffers  when  he  sees  the  evil  of  his  own 
work. 

The  virtuous  man  delights  in  this  world,  and  he  delights  in  the 
next ;  he  delights  in  both.  He  delights  and  rejoices,  when  he  sees  the 
purity  of  his  own  work. 

The  thoughtless  man,  even  if  he  can  recite  a  large  portion  (of  the 
law),  but  is  not  a  doer  of  it,  has  no  share  in  the  priesthood,  but  is  like  a 
cowherd  counting  the  cows  of  others. 

Whatever  a  hater  may  do  to  a  hater,  or  an  enemy  to  an  enemy,  a 
wrongly  directed  mind  will  do  us  greater  mischief. 

Death  subdues  a  man  who  is  gathering  flowers,  and  whose  mind  is 
distracted,  before  he  is  satiated  in  his  pleasures. 

As  the  bee  collects  nectar  and  departs  without  injuring  the  flower, 
or  its  colour  or  scent,  so  let  a  sage  dwell  in  his  village. 

Not  the  perversities  of  others,  not  their  sins  of  commission  or  omis- 
sion, but  his  own  misdeeds  and  negUgences  should  a  sage  take  notice  of. 

If  a  fool  be  associated  with  a  wise  man  even  all  his  life,  he  will 
perceive  the  truth  as  little  as  a  spoon  perceives  the  taste  of  soup. 

If  an  intelligent  man  be  associated  for  one  minute  only  with  a  wise 
man,  he  will  soon  perceive  the  truth,  as  the  tongue  perceives  the  taste  of 
soup. 

Well -makers  lead  the  water  (wherever  they  like)  ;  fletchers  bend  the 
arrow  ;  carpenters  bend  a  log  of  wood  ;   wise  people  fashion  themselves. 

If  a  man  for  a  hundred  years  worship  Agni  (fire)  in  the  forest,  and  if 
he  but  for  one  moment  pay  homage  to  a  man  whose  soul  is  groxinded  (in 
true  knowledge),  better  is  that  homage  than  sacrifice  for  a  hundred  years. 

Let  no  one  think  lightly  of  evil,  saying  in  his  heart.  It  will  not  come 
nigh  unto  me.  Even  by  the  falUng  of  waterdrops  a  waterpot  is  filled  ; 
the  fool  becomes  full  of  evil,  even  if  he  gather  it  little  by  little. 

Let  no  one  think  lightly  of  good,  saying  in  his  heart,  It  will  not  come 
nigh  unto  me.  Even  by  the  falling  of  waterdrops  a  waterpot  is  filled  ; 
the  wise  man  becomes  full  of  good,  even  if  he  gather  it  little  by  little. 

Is  there  in  this  world  any  man  so  restrained  by  hiuniUty  that  he 
does  not  mind  reproof,  as  a  welltrained  horse  the  whip  ?  Like  a  well- 
trained  horse  when  touched  by  the  whip,  be  ye  active  and  lively. 

Let  no  man  forget  his  own  duty  for  the  sake  of  another's,  however 
great ;  let  a  man,  after  he  has  discerned  his  own  duty,  be  always  attentive 
to  his  duty.     Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  x. 

For  ever  will  mankind  be  the  better  for  reading  such  maxims 
as  these.  I  have  quoted  them  from  various  parts  of  the  Dham- 
mapada  ;  and  I  can  hardly  conceive  that  they  did  not  come 
from  Siddartha  the  Buddha  himself  ;  but  external  evidence  is 
wanting,  and  we  do  not  exactly  know.  At  all  events,  he  was 
the  first  author  of  the  spirit  which  breathes  in  them.  Had  he 
lived  in  an  age  of  more  active  progress,  it  is  possible  that  he. 


70  INDIA  CONTINUED:  [ch. 

would  not  have  reached  so  deeply  into  the  things  of  the  spirit. 
M  Yet  it  is  impossible  not  to  regret  that  he  had  not  that  experience 
//of  the  power  of  God  which  so  much  abounds  in  the  writings  of 
j  the  Hebrew  prophets  ;    it  would  have  made  him  feel  that  that 
tangle  of  human  desire  and  passion  in  which  we  live  was  capable 
of  being  disentangled  and  made  straight,  capable  of  being  pre- 
sented as  in  itself  worthy  of  honour,  and  worthier  as  time  goes 
on  ;    and  hence  it  would  have  made  his  energies  more  active  in 
external  things.     Ho  was  not,  as  he  has  sometimes  been  called, 
an  atheist ;   but  the  Gods  were  not  to  him,  any  more  than  they 
j  had  been  to  the  Brahmin  sages,  a  source  of  strength  and  authors 
of  help  ;   their  highest  office  was  to  be  patterns  of  purity. 

Let  me  resume  the  account  of  his  life,  which  I  have  inter- 
rupted in  order  to  give  some  account  of  his  teachings.  There 
was  in  it  much  activity,  but  few  salient  circumstances.  He 
made  disciples  abundantly ;  among  them  his  own  son  Rahula, 
who  had  been  an  infant  when  he  left  his  home.  He  instituted 
an  Order  of  monks  ;  the  declaration  of  every  convert  was,  "  I 
take  refuge  in  the  Buddha,  in  the  doctrine,  in  the  Brotherhood  "  ; 
and  Buddha  himself  is  said  to  have  accepted  all  believers  with 
the  words^,  "  Come  hither,  0  monk ;  well  preached  is  the  doc- 
trine, walk  in  purity,  to  make  an  end  of  all  suffering."  He 
instituted,  at  the  request  of  his  foster-mother,  an  Order  of  nuns ; 
though  it  is  said  that  this  was  half  unwillingly  ;  and  his  sense 
of  the  dangerous  influence  of  women  upon  men  contended 
strongly  with  his  universal  philanthropy.  It  was  involved  in 
his  whole  train  of  thought  that  he  should  regard  celibacy  as  a 
higher  state  than  marriage  ;  yet  marriage  was  not  wholly  un- 
recognised by  him.  In  the  Sutta-Nipata,  among  a  number  of 
states  which  are  severally  described  as  "  the  highest  blessing," 
we  read  the  following  : 

Waiting  on  mother  and  father,  protecting  child  and  wife,  and  a 
qxiiet  calling,  this  is  the  highest  blessing.  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  x. 
part  ii.  p.  44. 

Besides  the  monks  and  nuns,  there  were  lay  adherents  of 
Buddha  and  his  doctrine,  among  whom  were  counted  kings 
and  nobles  ;  and  it  was  a  matter  of  course  that  adherents  of  this 
sort  were  of  great  importance  in  sustaining  the  whole  organi- 
sation of  the  Buddhist  community. 

''^^  Though  self-denial  is  the  keynote  of  Buddhist  doctrine,  and 
self-denial  is  compulsory  with  the  poor,  it  would  hardly  be  true 

'  Oldenbcrg's  Buddha,  p.  151. 


Ill]  SIDDARTHA  THE  BUDDHA  71 

to  say  that  the  Buddhist  doctrine  was  in  the  first  instance 
addressed  to  the  poor  ;  the  converts  mentioned  to  us  are  mainly 
of  the  Brahmin  and  warrior  castes  .J  There  is,  it  would  appear, 
aiTexception  in  the  person  of  Suiuta,  who  is  said  to  have  been 
"  despised  of  men,"  a  mere  day-labourer,  but  who  desired  to 
be  a  monk,  and  was  accepted  by  Buddha.  Oldenberg,  who  quotes 
this  story  {Buddha,  p.  157),  will  not  allow  any  other  nameable 
exception  to  the  rule  of  high  caste  among  the  converts  ;  and  he 
remarks  that  the  intellectual  difficulty  of  the  Buddhist  formula 
would  render  it  more  acceptable  to  the  rich  and  cultured  than 
to  the  poor.  This  we  might  naturally  suppose  ;  yet  I  see  in  the 
recent  work  entitXedi  Sermons  of  a  Buddhist  Abbot  (p.  8)  a  quotation 
from  the  Sutra  of  Forty- two  chapters,  in  which  Buddha  himself 
is  reported  to  have  said,  "  If  you  endeavour  to  embrace  the  Way 
through  much  learning,  the  Way  will  not  be  understood.  If 
you  observe  the  Way  with  simpUcity  of  heart,  great  indeed  is 
this  Way." 

In  truth,  the  mere  difficulty  of  the  Buddhist  formula  would 
not  be  a  hindrance  to  the  poor  joining  the  Buddhist  community, 
if  the  teaching  on  the  whole  were  felt  to  be  intelligible  and  com- 
forting^/~"The  probabiHty  is  that  the  caste  system  was  during 
the  days  of  Buddhist  predominance  more  or  less  undermined  in 
India  ;  not  through  any  formal  intention  (for  Buddha  never 
opposed  the  Brahmins)  but  by  the  operation  of  those  principles 
of  self-denial  and  poverty  to  which  all  Buddhists  were  subject. 
Between  monk  and  monk,  it  is  clear,  no  difference  of  caste  could 
ever  be  allowed  to  operate  ;  and  the  principles  of  universal  love 
so  nobly  propagated  by  Buddha  would  tend  to  produce  the  same 
equahty  between  laymen  who  adhered  to  the  religion.  All  this, 
however,  would  not  prevent  the  sequence  of  Buddhist  conversion 
being  from  the  upper  classes  to  the  lower,  and  not  from  the  lower 
to  the  upper,  as  was  the  case  in  the  development  of  Christianity. 

We  picture  to  ourselves  Buddha  as  mainly  moving  among 
the  higher  ranks  of  society,  though  not  rejecting  the  poor,  and 
himself  to  all  outward  appearance  poor  ;  devoid  of  aU  tokens 
that  might  indicate  a  prince  or  a  chieftain,  clad  in  a  simple 
yellow  robe,  and  bearing  a  bowl  into  which  might  be  poured 
the  donations  of  rice  which  others  would  give  him  for  his  sub- 
sistence. We  picture  him  as  wandering  from  place  to  place, 
sometimes  with  hundreds  of  followers,  inculcating  everywhere 
the  restraint  of  desire,  teaching  love  and  kindness  as  due  to  men 
and   animals,   teaching   finally   the   preeminence   of  that   state. 


72  INDIA   CONTINUED:  [oh. 

Nirvana,  in  which  our  personal  being  shall  be  extinguished. 
We  picture  him  as  sometimes,  though  not  at  first,  accompanied 
by  women  as  well  as  by  men  ;  as  receiving  gifts  from  women 
as  well  as  from  men.  A  great  person  he  was  felt  to  be  all  through, 
great  and  peaceful  in  soul  ;  kings  treated  him  as  one  to  whom 
they  must  look  up  ;  Bimbisara,  the  ruler  of  Magadha,  and 
Pasenadi,  the  ruler  of  Kosala,  are  mentioned  especially  as  minis- 
tering to  the  wants  of  the  Buddhist  community.  The  Brahmins 
can  hardly  have  approved  of  his  teaching  ;  yet  he  never  quarrelled 
with  them.  Only  once  do  we  hear  of  an  enemy  of  his,  his  cousin 
Devadatta,  who  tried  to  supplant  him,  and  who  is  said  to  have 
come  to  an  evil  end  ;  in  whatever  degree  this  may  be  true,  the 
attempt  of  course  failed.  In  all  the  written  accounts  of  Buddha 
that  have  been  handed  down  to  posterity,  we  have  to  remember 
that  oral  tradition  lies  at  the  base  of  them  ;  that  oral  tradition 
was  for  several  centuries  the  sole  means  by  which  any  knowledge 
of  Buddha  was  preserved  ;  and  hence  a  poetic  colouring  surrounds 
all  that  we  read  of  him,  and  the  substratum  of  truth  has  received 
many  imaginative  additions.  Moreover  the  reverential  phraseo- 
logy which  always  (as  was  to  be  anticipated)  surrounded  any 
mention  of  his  name  was  a  hindrance  to  the  full  acknowledg- 
ment of  those  roughnesses  in  his  ordinary  career  from  which  he 
could  not  have  been  entirely  free.  That  he  had  to  exercise 
discipline,  directly  or  mediately,  in  the  many  monastic  estab- 
lishments which  had  been  founded  through  his  influence,  we  know; 
and  it  is  clear  that  nuns  as  well  as  monks  came  under  his  super- 
intendence in  this  respect,  though  of  course  with  nothing  like 
the  same  frequency.  The  discipline  was  mild  ;  the  severest 
ordinary  penalty  was  the  refusal  to  speak  to  an  erring  brother 
or  sister  ;  (and  this  penalty,  we  read,  Buddha  even  on  his  death- 
bed imposed  on  the  monk  Khama)  ;  in  the  last  resort,  the 
offender  was  expelled  from  the  Order. 

In  all  that  he  did,  the  personal  charm  of  Buddha  was  clearly 
great,  and  was  one  chief  cause  of  his  success  ;  and  as  illustrative 
of  the  gentle  nature  of  his  reproofs  the  following  anecdote  may 
be  given  here^  : 

Thus  is  related  to  us  the  conversation  of  Buddha  with  Sona,  a  young 
man  who  had  imposed  on  himself  an  excess  of  ascetic  observances,  and 
now,  when  lie  becoines  aware  of  the  fruitlessness  of  his  practice,  is  on  the 
point  of  tiu"ning  to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  reverting  to  a  life  of  enjoy- 
ment.    Buddha  says  to  this  disciple:     "How  is  it,  Sona,  were  you  able 

^  I  quote  it  from  Oldcnlxjrg's  Buddha,  p.  189  ;    the  source  is  Mahavagga,  v.  1-15. 


m]  SIDDARTHA  THE  BUDDHA  73 

to  play  the  lute  before  you  left  home?"  "Yes,  sire."  "What  do  you 
think  then,  Sona,  if  the  strings  of  yovir  lute  are  too  tightly  strung,  will 
the  lute  give  out  the  proper  tone  and  be  fit  to  play  ?  "  "It  will  not,  sire." 
"  And  what  do  you  think,  Sona,  if  the  strings  of  your  lute  be  strung  too 
slack,  will  the  lute  then  give  out  the  proper  tone  and  be  fit  to  play  ? " 
"  It  will  not,  sire."  "  But  how,  Sona,  if  the  strings  of  5'our  lute  be  not  strung 
too  tight  or  too  slack,  if  they  have  the  proper  degree  of  tension,  will  the 
lute  then  give  out  the  proper  sound  and  be  fit  to  play?"  "Yes,  sire." 
"In  the  same  way,  Sona,  energy  too  much  strained  tends  to  excessive  zeal, 
and  energy  too  much  relaxed  tends  to  apathy.  Therefore,  Sona,  cxiltivate 
in  yourself  the  mean  of  energy,  and  press  on  to  the  mean  in  your  mental 
powers,  and  place  this  before  you  as  yoxir  aim." 

I  come  to  the  last  scene  of  his  life.  We  perceive,  amid  all 
the  curious  formahty  of  the  narrative  (which  may  be  read  in  the 
eleventh  volume  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East),  that  he  was 
greatly  beloved  by  those  among  whom  he  had  moved  and 
preached.  Shortly  before  this,  he  had  accepted  the  invitation 
y.  of  a  courtesan,  Ambapah  by  name,  who  had  asked  him  to  stay 
at  her  mango  grove,  preferring  her  invitation  to  that  of  the 
Likkhavis  of  Vesah,  men  young  and  noble.  The  Likkhavis 
offered  Ambapah  large  sums  if  she  would  give  up  her  guest 
to  them,  but  she  answered,  "  My  Lords,  were  you  to  offer  all 
Vesali  with  its  subject  territory,  I  would  not  give  up  so  honour- 
able a  feast !  "  Then,  we  read,  the  Likkhavis  cast  up  their 
hands,  exclaiming,  "  We  are  outdone  by  this  mango  girl !  we 
are  outdone  by  this  mango  girl !  "  but  they  came  to  Ambapah's 
grove  none  the  less,  and  Buddha  discoursed  to  them  there,  and 
they  departed.  The  feast  was  the  next  morning,  Buddha  and 
his  brother  monks  having  (it  would  appear)  slept  in  the  open 
air,  in  the  mango  grove  ;  but  the  feast  was  in  Ambapah's  dwell- 
ing house,  and  consisted  of  sweet  rice  and  cakes. 

''And  when  the  Blessed  One,"  we  read,  "  had  quite  finished  his  meal, 
the  courtesan  had  a  low  stool  brought,  and  sat  down  at  his  side,  and 
addressed  the  Blessed  One,  and  said  :  'Lord,  I  present  this  mansion  to 
the  order  of  mendicants,  of  which  the  Buddha  is  the  chief.'  And  the 
Blessed  One  accepted  the  gift ;  and  after  instructing,  and  rousing,  and 
gladdening  her  with  religious  discourse,  he  rose  from  his  seat  and  departed 
thence." 

Such  a  narrative  gives  a  milder  idea  of  Buddha's  behaviour 
towards  women  than  some  of  the  sayings  which  are  elsewhere 
attributed  to  him  ;  but  a  rigid  severity  was  not  according  to 
his  character.  In  the  same  way,  we  perceive  that  his  general 
maxims  of  abstaining  from  animal  food  were  not  intended  to 
be  of  absolute  stringency ;  for  the  immediate  cause  of  his 
death  (though  his  health  previously  had  not  been  strong)  was 


74  INDIA   CONTINUED:  [CH. 

partaking  of  a  meal  of  dried  pork  which  Kunda,  a  worker  in  metal, 
had  prepared  for  him.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  he  was 
particularly  anxious  that  Kunda  should  not  feel  any  remorse 
for  the  accidental  result ;  and  he  begged  his  best-loved  disciple, 
Ananda,  to  assure  Kunda  that  the  result  was  not  for  harm  but 
for  good  ;  and  that  the  result  to  Kunda  himself  would  be  not 
harm,  but  blessing.  Buddha  took  more  than  one  journey  after 
the  meal  which  caused  his  death,  and  the  vehement  pain  which 
he  suffered  at  first  passed  away  ;  and  then  the  end  came  tran- 
quilly. He  had  been  conducted  to  a  place  where  two  Sala  trees 
were  blooming,  though  it  was  not  the  season  for  such  flowers  ; 
"  I  am  weary,  Ananda,  and  would  he  down,"  he  said.  Presently, 
after  much  conversation,  Ananda  went  away,  and  we  read  this  : 

Now  the  venerable  Ananda  went  into  the  Vihara,  and  stood  leaning 
against  the  lintel  of  the  door,  and  weeping  at  the  thought :  "Alas  !  I 
remain  still  but  a  learner,  one  who  has  yet  but  to  work  out  his  own  per- 
fection. And  the  Master  is  about  to  pass  away  from  me — he  who  is  so 
kind  ! " 

Now  the  Blessed  One  called  the  brethren,  and  said,  "Where  then, 
brethren,  is  Ananda?". .  .And  the  Blessed  One  called  a  certain  brother, 
and  said,  "Go  now,  brother,  and  call  Ananda  in  my  name,  and  say,  Brother 
Ananda,  the  Master  calls  for  thee." 

"Very  well,  brother,"  said  the  venerable  Ananda,  in  assent,  to  that 
brother.  And  he  went  up  to  the  place  where  the  Blessed  One  was,  and 
when  he  had  come  there,  he  bowed  down  before  the  Blessed  One,  and  took 
his  seat  respectfully  on  one  side. 

Then  the  Blessed  One  said  to  the  venerable  Ananda,  as  he  sat  there 
by  his  side  :  ' '  Enough,  Ananda !  Do  not  let  yourself  be  troubled ;  do 
not  weep  !  Have  I  not  already,  on  former  occasions,  told  you  that  it  is 
in  the  very  nature  of  all  things  most  near  and  dear  unto  us  that  we  must 
divide  ourselves  from  them,  leave  them,  sever  ourselves  from  them  ? .  .  . 
For  a  long  time,  Ananda,  you  have  been  very  dear  to  me  by  thoughts 
of  love,  kind  and  good,  that  never  varies,  and  is  beyond  all  measure.  You 
have  done  well,  Ananda  !  Be  earnest  in  effort,  and  you  too  shall  soon  be 
free  from  the  great  evils — from  sensuality,  from  individuality,  from  delu- 
sion, and  from  ignorance  !  " 

So  did  Buddha,  in  the  hour  of  his  approaching  dissolution, 
counsel  his  best-loved  disciple  ;  and  not  him  only  ;  for  presently 
the  other  brethren  came  too,  and  to  them  also  he  addressed 
words  of  counsel.  Ananda  lamented  that  the  great  Master 
should  die  in  so  poor  and  mean  a  place,  and  even  proposed  that 
he  should  be  moved  to  Benares  or  some  other  great  city  near 
at  hand  ;  but  Buddha  rejected  the  idea,  and  indeed  the  time 
was  past  for  such  transference.  It  so  happened,  however,  that 
the  Mallas  of  Kusinara  (a  neighbouring  town)  were  holding  a 


Ill]  SIDDARTHA  THE   BUDDHA  75 

meeting  in  their  council  chamber ;  these  were  summoned, 
and  they  came  with  their  wives  and  families,  and  to  each  family 
in  succession  Buddha  addressed  a  few  words,  and  they  departed 
with  tears.  Then  lastly  he  asked  all  the  brethren,  whether 
they  had  any  doubt  of  the  truth  of  his  message,  and  whether 
they  had  anything  to  ask  him.  But  they  had  no  doubt,  nor 
anything  to  ask.  Just  before  this,  the  last  convert  made  by 
Buddha  during  his  lifetime,  Subhadda,  had  professed  his  accept- 
ance of  Buddha's  message,  and  had  entered  the  Order.  And 
then  Buddha  uttered  his  last  words,  "  Hearken,  O  disciples, 
I  charge  you  ;  everything  that  cometh  into  being  passeth  away  ; 
strive  without  ceasing."  And  then,  as  we  should  say,  he  died  ; 
or,  as  his  disciples  said,  he  entered  by  successive  stages  into 
Nirvana,  the  final  blessedness. 

Such  was  the  death,  some  twenty-three  or  twenty -four  cen- 
turies ago,  of  one  of  the  most  loving  spirits  that  ever  lived  on 
earth.  I  have  of  necessity  greatly  abridged  the  narrative  ;  and 
since  I  think  it  may  be  in  the  main  accepted  as  true,  I  have 
not  added  to  it  the  few  wonders  which  were  introduced  into 
it  by  his  followers  in  after  ages.  It  was  natural  for  them  to 
think  that  at  such  a  moment  the  earth  should  quake  and  the 
heavens  thunder,  and  that  Brahma  Sahampati,  the  creative 
Deity,  should  utter  a  declaration  as  to  the  importance  of  that 
moment,  when  the  victorious  Buddha  was  finally  perfected. 

I  have  implied  that  there  were  qualities  in  which  Buddha 
fell  short.  The  desires  and  passions  of  ordinary  men  have  a 
certain  measure  of  goodness  which  he  seldom  recognised  and 
perhaps  in  terms  denied  ;  and  though  it  would  not  be  right 
to  interpret  such  a  denial  too  rigidly,  it  cannot  be  said  that 
material  happiness  was  any  part  of  the  aim  which  he  set  before 
men.  Buddha  hardly  felt  the  full  compass  of  his  assertion, 
when  he  said  that  material  happiness  is  transitory.  It  is  transi- 
V  tory  in  a  certain  obvious  sense  ;  but  it  leaves  its  mark  on  the 
soul ;  and  honourable  happiness  leaves  a  mark  which  we  should 
be  sorry  to  dispense  with.  Yet  when  we  reflect  how  much 
dishonourable  happiness  there  is  in  the  world,  the  happiness 
of  one  implying  the  unhappiness  of  many,  our  surprise  may  be 
lessened  that  Buddha  condemned  the  pursuit  after  material 
happiness  without  making  any  exception  to  such  condemnation. 

Even  at  the  present  day,  how  often  does  the  happiness  of 

|i  the  rich  involve  the  unhappiness   of  the  poor  ;   and   if   in  the 

'  present  day,  how  much  more  in  the  age  of  Buddha,  an  age  in 


76  INDIA  CONTINUED:  [ch. 

which  the  world  was  full  of  cruelties,  often  deliberately  perpe- 
trated under  the  name  of  justice,  to  which  there  is  no  parallel 
in  the  world  of  to-day  ;  an  age  in  which  indifference  to  the 
welfare  of  the  stranger  and  the  alien  was  almost  universal ! 
We  must  not  be  greatly  surprised  if  Buddha  thought  that  desire 
and  passion,  whose  fruits  in  so  many  instances  he  saw  to  be  bad, 
were  things  intrinsically  and  always  to  be  avoided.  It  is  per- 
mitted to  ourselves  to  hope  that  we  may  purify  desire  and  passion 
without  abolishing  them  ;  and  the  experience  of  the  world  has 
advanced  so  far  that  we  may  say  that,  for  their  perfect  puri- 
fication, God's  help  is  needed.  But  the  experience  of  the  world 
had  not  advanced  so  far  in  Buddha's  age. 

Only  it  would  not  be  right,  because  he  was  deficient  on  the 
side  of  trust  in  God,  to  put  out  of  sight  all  that  he  did  on  the 
human  side  for  the  advancement  of  mankind.  Can  it  be  said 
that  we  of  the  twentieth  century  after  Christ  are  beyond  the 
need  of  such  instruction  as  that  which  I  have  quoted  from  the 
Dhararaapada  ?  Few  of  us,  I  think,  are  beyond  being  benefited 
by  Buddha's  axioms  of  morality. 

After  the  death  of  Buddha,  his  doctrine  spread  with  vigour 
in  the  north-east  of  India,  and  councils  were  held  for  the  deter- 
mination of  points  of  greater  or  less  importance  in  connexion 
with  the  religion.  But  the  adoption  of  the  Buddhist  creed  by 
the  great  king  Asoka  in  the  third  century  before  Christ  was 
perhaps  the  most  important  of  all  the  events  in  the  early  history 
of  Buddhism,  that  is  to  say  between  the  death  of  Buddha  and 
the  Christian  era.  Asoka  was  the  grandson  of  Chandragupta, 
to  whom  ambassadors  had  come  from  the  Greek  king  Seleucus 
Nicator,  one  of  the  successors  of  Alexander.  With  all  his  great- 
ness, Asoka's  family  had  originally  sprung  from  the  lowest  caste, 
the  Sudras,  and  thus  he  had  a  certain  interest  in  the  overthrow 
of  Brahminism.  He  reigned  over  all  India  north  of  the  Vindhya 
hills,  and  numerous  inscriptions,  put  up  by  his  command,  still 
remain,  and  commend  to  us  the  precepts  of  Buddha. 

Another  powerful  king,  who  in  Buddhist  writings  is  known 
as  Milinda,  but  who  was  of  Greek  origin  and  in  his  native  tongue 
is  known  as  Menander  or  Menandros,  attached  himself  to  the 
doctrine  at  the  end  of  the  third  century  before  Christ.  The 
Questions  of  King  Milinda  is  a  famous  Buddhist  work,  translated 
in  the  35th  and  3Gth  volumes  of  Sacred  Books  of  the  East.  He 
reigned  in  the  north-west  of  India,  and  is  said  to  have  made 
considerable  conquests. 


ni]  SIDDARTHA   THE   BUDDHA  77 

Thus,  whether  by  the  power  of  monarchs,  or  by  its  own 
dignity  and  charm,  the  Buddhist  doctrine  and  disciphne,  the 
Buddhist  monasteries  and  lay  communities,  made  great  progress 
in  the  world  for  many  centuries  after  the  death  of  Buddha  him- 
self. In  the  first  century  of  our  era  Buddhism  was  carried  into 
China,  and  had  great  influence  in  that  country.  In  the  sixth 
century  of  our  era  it  was  carried  into  Japan,  and  from  the  ninth 
century  onward  spread  there  rapidly.  (Lafcadio  Ream's  Japan, 
an  Interpretation,  pp.  204-5.)  Undoubtedly  the  Buddhist  doc- 
trine had  power  as  a  missionary  creed. 

Yet,  when  we  look  into  it,  this  power  would  seem  to  need 
something  to  supplement  it.  In  India  (except  so  far  as  Burmah 
and  Ceylon  are  concerned)  Buddhism  proved  after  all  to  be  but 
a  transitory  phase  of  behef .  For  five  hundred  years  it  grew  ; 
then  slowly  it  began  to  yield  before  the  ancient  Brahmin  reHgion, 
which  had  never  really  vanished  from  the  hearts  of  the  Hindus. 
As  it  was  not  by  the  help  of  persecution  that  Buddhism  arose 
in  India,  so  neither  was  it  through  persecution  by  its  enemies 
that  it  fell.  It  fell,  we  cannot  doubt,  because  it  could  not  unite 
itseK  with  Brahminism,  and  Brahminism,  with  all  its  faults, 
was  more  tangible,  more  imaginable,  than  Buddhism.  Some- 
thing there  was  which  needed  to  be  added  to  Buddhism,  before 
it  could  deeply  affect  the  popular  mind.  In  China  and  Japan 
Buddhism  did  survive,  because  it  was  capable  of  uniting  itself 
with  that  ancestor  worship  which  is  the  heart  of  the  religion 
of  those  two  great  countries.  But  with  China  and  Japan  a 
future  chapter  must  deal  more  fully. 


CHAPTER   IV 

ANCIENT   RELIGION  :    PERSIA 

Truly  does  Darmesteter  say  of  the  religion  of  ancient  Persia, 
"  There  has  been  no  other  great  belief  in  the  world  that  ever 
left  such  poor  and  meagre  monuments  of  its  past  splendour." 
Yet  the  religion  of  ancient  Persia  has  one  claim  on  our  regard 
which  the  more  famous  religions  of  ancient  Greece  and  Rome 
have  not ;  it  has  survived,  whereas  they  have  perished.  The 
name  of  Zeus  or  Jupiter  is  no  longer  honoured  by  any  man  as 
a  worthy  name  of  the  Supreme  Being  ;  but  Auramazda,  to  whom 
the  Persian  king  Darius,  five  hundred  years  before  Christ,  re- 
corded his  devotion  on  the  rocks  of  Behistun,  in  cuneiform  letters 
legible  to-day  and  interpreted  by  scholars,  is  worshipped  at  this 
hour  by  the  community  of  the  Parsis,  who  mostly  have  found  a 
refuge  in  India.  Ahura  Mazda — Auramazda — Ormuzd  ;  whether 
it  is  in  one  or  another  of  these  three  forms  that  the  Supreme  Being 
is  named  and  worshipped,  the  worshipper  belongs  to  the  same 
line  of  tradition ;  and  that  tradition  has  never  quite  died  out 
as  a  living  word  among  men. 

But  when  we  ask  what  is  the  history  of  this  tradition  ;  when 
we  ask  how  and  at  what  date  it  originated,  and  what  we  are  to 
think  of  the  famous  prophet  Zoroaster,  or  Zarathustra,  whose 
name  is  so  intimately  associated  with  it  ;  when  we  ask  what 
we  are  to  think  of  the  scarcely  less  celebrated  Magi,  who  were 
its  priests  ;  when  we  seek  to  judge  of  the  real  worth  of  the  religion 
indicated  by  these  names,  its  power  to  strengthen  the  human 
heart  and  to  direct  men's  conduct  fruitfully  and  honourably  ; 
we  find  ourselves  in  a  maze  of  doubt  ;  and  the  most  learned 
persons,  who  have  solved  the  enigmas  of  the  language,  who  have 
made  plain  the  Avcsta  and  the  Pahlavi  texts,  who  have  wrested 
from  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  their  long-hidden  secret — these 
men,  so  eminent  and  so  courageous  in  their  researches,  have 
wide  differences  among  themselves  as  to  the  century  in  which 


CH.  IV]  ANCIENT  RELIGION:    PERSIA  79 

Zoroaster  lived,  as  to  his  relation  to  the  Magi,  and  are  not  even 
aU  of  them  sure  that  there  ever  was  such  a  person  at  all. 

Let  me  try  to  unravel  the  tangled  skein  of  the  history  which 
gives  occasion  for  differences  so  serious  ;  remembering  always 
my  dependence  on  the  learned  men  who  are  the  first  authorities 
on  the  subject. 

The  sacred  book  of  the  Persian  reUgion  is  called  the  Avesta  ; 
it  resembles  the  Bible  rather  than  the  Koran  in  this,  that  it 
was  written  by  many  persons,  not  by  one  person,  and  at  different 
epochs  of  time.  If  we  knew  precisely  the  date  at  which  the 
several  parts  of  it  were  respectively  written,  we  should  have  an 
invaluable  key  to  the  history  ;  but  this  knowledge  does  not  he 
on  the  sm-face,  at  any  rate. 

The  different  parts  of  the  Avesta  are  these  :  First,  the  Gathas  ; 
the  oldest  part  of  the  collection  and  written  in  a  dialect  different, 
generally  speaking,  from  what  we  find  elsewhere  ;  though  there 
are  some  other  examples  of  it.  The  Gathas  are  poetry,  and  are 
recited  as  hymns  in  the  rehgious  services  of  the  Parsis  even  at 
the  present  day.  They  are  therefore  not  history  ;  yet  there 
is  no  part  of  the  whole  Avesta  in  which  there  is  so  near  an 
approximation  to  history  as  in  the  Gathas.  The  name  of 
Zarathustra  occurs  frequently  in  them,  and  also  the  name  of 
Vistaspa,  the  royal  patron  of  Zarathustra,  and  the  names  of 
others  ;  and  the  mention  of  these  persons  is  the  mention  of  real 
contemporaries  of  the  writer,  whoever  he  may  be  ;  and  the 
writer  and  his  friends  are  engaged  in  serious  conflicts  with  ene- 
mies, preaching  and  praying,  fighting  and  making  converts, 
nurturing  their  cattle,  and  lastly  marrying  ;  for  the  final  hymn 
of  the  Gathas  relates  the  marriage  of  Zarathustra's  daughter 
to  one  of  his  attached  followers.  Well  does  Professor  MiUs 
contrast  the  Gathas  with  the  later  parts  of  the  Avesta  in  the 
following  passage  : 

In  the  Gathas  all  is  sober  and  real.  The  Kine's  soul  is  indeed  poeti- 
cally described  as  wailing  aloud,  and  the  Deity  with  His  Immortals  is 
reported  as  speaking,  hearing,  and  seeing ;  but  with  these  rhetorical 
exceptions,  everything  which  occupies  the  attention  is  practical  in  the 
extreme.  Grehma  and  Bendva,  the  Karpans,  the  Kavis,  and  the  Usigs, 
are  no  mythical  monsters.  No  dragon  threatens  the  settlements,  and  no 
fabulous  beings  defend  them.  Zarathustra,  Gamaspa,  Frashaostra,  and 
Maidyomah  ;  the  Spitamas,  Hvogvas,  the  Haekataspas,  are  as  real,  and 
are  alluded  to  with  a  simplicity  as  unconscious,  as  any  characters  in  his- 
tory. Except  inspiration,  there  are  also  no  miracles.  All  the  action  is 
made  up  of  the  exertions  and  passions  of  living  and  suffering  men.     Let 


/ 


80  ANCIENT   RELIGION:    PERSIA  [ch. 

the  Zendist^  study  the  Gathas  well,  and  then  let  him  turn  to  the  Yeists 
or  the  Vendidad  ;  he  will  go  from  the  land  of  reality  to  the  land  of  fable. 
He  leaves  in  the  one  a  toiling  prophet,  to  meet  in  the  other  a  phantastic 
demigod.     Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xxxi.  p.  xxvi. 

The  passage  here  quoted  may  stand  as  a  prelude  to  all  study 
of  the  Avesta  ;  it  strikes  the  note  of  a  contrast  which  is  never  to 
be  forgotten  ;  it  brings  clear  before  us  the  fact  that  in  whatever 
degree  imagination  or  superstition  may  enter  into  the  Zoroastrian 
sacred  writings,  there  is  solid  rock  at  the  bottom  of  them  ;  and, 
it  may  be  added,  true  conscientiousness,  real  heartfelt  faith. 
These  are  the  qualities  inherent  in  the  Gathas,  rugged  though 
they  be.  Outside  the  Gathas,  the  Avesta  consists  of  the  Vendidad, 
the  Yasts,  the  later  Yasnas  (or  hymns),  and  some  other  shorter 
treatises  which  have  considerable  likeness  to  the  Yasnas. 
But  for  the  present  let  us  dismiss  these  later  treatises,  and  fix 
our  attention  on  the  Gathas  alone.  In.  the  Gathas  Zoroaster 
comes  before  us  as  a  man  ;  it  would  seem  that  the  greater  part 
of  them  was  written  by  him  ;  perhaps  even  the  whole.  And 
what  about  the  Magi  ?  I  believe,  myself,  that  the  Magi  do  to  a 
certain  extent  lie  behind  the  Gathas,  in  a  manner  whicli  must 
be  explained  later.  But  this  is  not  universally  admitted,  and  it 
is  certain  that  the  Magi  are  never  mentioned  in  the  Gathas. 
Zoroaster  then  for  the  present  comes  before  us  alone.  Our  dates 
are  undetermined  ;  but  whether  we  are  reading  about  events 
which  were  taking  place  in  the  fourteenth  century  before  Christ, 
or  whether  we  are  reading  about  events  which  were  taking  place 
in  the  sixth  century  before  Christ,  or  whether  some  intermediate 
era  between  these  two  extremes  is  before  us,  we  are  reading  in 
the  Gathas  about  real  persons,  real  things.  Let  us  examine 
their  nature. 

I  have  said  that  the  Gathas  are  poetry,  and  that  they  are 
recited  as  hymns  in  the  religious  services  of  the  modern  Parsis. 
But  it  would  be  incorrect  to  suppose  that  they  were  originally 
written  as  hymns,  or  with  any  view  to  religious  services.  Of  the 
later  Yasnas  it  would  be  con-ect  to  say  this  :  the  later  Yasnas 
were  written  for  a  religion  that  had  become  dominant ;  and 
adornment  and  splendour,  not  contention,  is  their  aim.  But 
contention  is  written  on  every  line  of  the  Gathas.  They  are 
songs,  but  songs  of  battle  ;  the  enemy  is  present,  and  the  writer 
is  praying  and  fighting  against  him.     Who  is  the  enemy  ?     The 

•  By  the  Zendist  ia  meant  properly  "  the  student  of  the  language  of  the  Avesta  "; 
but  Professor  Mills  doubtless  intends  by  it  "  the  student  of  the  Avesta  "  simply. 


IV]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  81 

enemy  comes  before  us  first  in  material  fashion,  as  a  nomad 
horde  ravaging  the  peaceful  works  of  agriculture  and  pasture. 
Take,  as  an  instance  of  the  feeling  of  the  prophet  (for  a  prophet 
the  writer  of  the  Gathas  is  all  through),  the  following  words  from 
that  early  hymn  (or  Yasna)  which  is  numbered  as  the  29th,  It 
is  a  prayer  raised  by  the  suffering  peasantry  (symbohsed  as  the 
soul  of  the  Kine,  or  as  others  translate  it,  the  Ox-soul)  to  God 
and  his  Righteousness  for  protection  against  the  marauders  : 

Unto  you  the  Soxil  of  the  Kine  cried  aloud  .  For  whom  did  ye  create 
me,  and  by  whom  did  ye  fashion  me  ?  On  me  comes  the  assault  of  wrath, 
and  of  violent  power,  the  blow  of  desolation,  audacious  insolence,  and 
thievish  might.  None  other  pasturegiver  have  I  than  you,  therefore  do 
ye  teach  me  good  tillage  for  the  fields.  Sacred  Books  0/  the  East,  vol. 
XXXI.  p.  6  (translation  by  Professor  Mills). 

Thus  does  Zarathustra  (let  me  be  allowed  the  form  of  his 
name  used  in  the  Avesta)  plunge  into  the  heart  of  practical 
religion.  Through  him  the  "Kine"  (or  the  "settlements"  as  he 
calls  them  elsewhere)  plead  with  Ahura  Mazda  and  Asha — with 
God  and  his  Righteousness.  We  must  not  suppose  that  Ahura 
Mazda  and  Asha  are  thought  of  as  two  different  beings,  though 
they  proceed  to  converse  together  ;  but  the  representation  is 
poetical.  The  question  is :  Who  shall  be  appointed  leader  of 
the  herds  in  their  distress  ?  The  difficulty  of  such  an  appoint- 
ment, men  being  the  imperfect  beings  that  they  are,  is  urged. 
Upon  this  Zarathustra  intervenes  : 

The  Great  Creator  is  himself  most  mindful  of  the  uttered  indications 
which  have  been  fulfilled  beforehand  hitherto  in  the  deeds  of  demon  gods 
and  men,  and  of  those  which  shall  be  fulfilled  by  them  hereafter.  He 
Ahura  is  the  discerning  arbiter  ;  so  shall  it  be  to  us  as  he  shall  will  ! 
Therefore  it  is  that  we  both,  my  soul  and  the  soul  of  the  mother  Kine, 
are  making  our  supplications  for  the  two  worlds  to  Ahura,  and  with  hands 
stretched  out  in  entreaty,  when  we  pray  to  the  Great  Creator  with  ques- 
tions in  our  doubt.  Not  for  the  righteous  liver,  not  for  the  thrifty,  shall 
there  be  destruction  together  with  the  wicked.     Ibid.  vol.  xxxi.  pp.  8,  9. 

The  two  worlds  here  mentioned  are  the  material  world  and  the 
spiritual  world.  Immediately  upon  this  Zarathustra  himself  is 
appointed  the  people's  guide  ;   it  is  Ahura  Mazda  who  speaks  : 

This  man  is  found  for  me  here  who  alone  has  hearkened  to  our  indi- 
cations, Zarathustra  Spitama  !  Our  mighty  and  completed  acts  of  grace 
he  desires  to  enotuice  for  us,  for  Me,  the  Great  Creator,  and  for  Right- 
eousness ;  wherefore  I  will  give  him  the  good  abode  and  authoritative 
place  of  such  an  one  as  speaks  ! 

M.D.A.  6 


I 


82  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  [ch. 

The  Kine  weep,  regarding  Zarathustra  as  too  feeble  for  so 
great  a  purpose  ;  but  the  hymn  ends  by  Zarathustra  praying  for 
aid  in  his  great  cause,  so  that  "the  peaceful  amenities  of  home 
and  quiet  happiness"  may  be  restored  to  the  sufferers. 

It  is  in  the  hymn  (or  Yasna)  numbered  as  immediately  pre- 
ceding the  one  just  quoted  (but  the  arrangement  cannot  be  held 
certain)  that  Vistaspa,  the  royal  patron  of  Zoroaster,  is  first 
named,  and  also  Frashaostra,  one  of  the  most  intimate  friends 
and  allies  of  the  prophet.  These  names,  along  with  other  names 
of  friends  and  foes,  occur  frequently  in  the  Gathas. 

Zoroaster,  it  will  be  seen,  founds  himself  on  this  material  world 
in  which  we  live,  but  reaches  out  of  it,  in  his  thoughts  and  in  his 
prayers,  to  the  heavenly  invisible  world.  He  desires,  for  himself 
and  for  those  with  whom  he  is  allied,  the  happiness  of  peaceful 
homes  and  prosperous  communities — prosperous  according  to 
the  ideas  of  that  primitive  time,  the  prosperity  of  pasture  and 
agriculture;  and  he  prays  to  Ahura  Mazda  (the  "Wise  Lord") 
that  this  may  be  accomplished.  But  his  religion  is  not  confined 
to  these  simple  elements.  Before  him  stand  the  enemy,  the 
despoilers  of  that  peasantry  whose  protector  and  advocate  he  is  ; 
and  it  is  not  enough  for  him  to  fight  against  them  with  material 
weapons,  he  must  also  find  out  how  these  foes  are  regarded  in 
the  divine  counsels — Does  Ahura  Mazda,  the  Wise  Lord,  approve 
of  them  ?  Surely  not ;  it  is  by  another  spirit  that  they  are 
inspired  ;  and  it  is  not  only  in  their  predatory  practices,  it  is  in 
the  thoughts  of  their  heart,  in  that  which  they  call  their  religion, 
in  the  deities  whom  they  worship,  that  Zoroaster  feels  them  to 
be  hostile.  There  is  then,  besides  the  Spirit  which  is  akin 
to  Ahura  Mazda,  a  false  spirit  also  in  the  world,  deceiving  and 
leading  astray  ;  and  as  Zoroaster  preaches  adherence  to  the  Wise 
Spirit,  so  is  he  constrained  to  preach  avoidance  of  the  false  spirit. 
How  naturally  then  did  there  arise  in  him  that  view  of  the  double 
character  of  the  world,  of  two  principles,  one  good  and  the  other 
evil,  contending  togetlier  in  all  things  for  the  mastery,  by  which 
the  doctrine  which  he  preached  became  afterwards  best  known  to 
posterity  !  It  is  called  a  dualism  ;  but  we  must  not  do  Zoroaster 
the  injustice  of  supposing  that  he  preached  it  with  a  technical 
rigidity,  or  that  he  thought  of  his  evil  spirit  as  the  equal  adversary 
of  the  Wise  Spirit.  His  feeling  is  truly  monotheistic  ;  and  it  is 
the  Good  that  will  conquer  ;  that  is  his  unmistakable  prophecy, 
though  we  may  have  some  doubt  as  to  the  precise  end  which 
he  assigned  to  the  evil.     But  it  is  time  now  to  quote  his  own 


IV]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  83 

description  of  the  doctrine  to  which  I  have  been  referring ;  it  is 
from  the  30th  Yasna,  immediately  succeeding  to  that  from  which 
I  have  already  quoted : 

And  now  I  will  proclaim,  O  ye  who  are  drawing  near  and  seeking 
to  be  taught  !  those  animadversions  which  appertain  to  Him  who  knows 
all  things  whatsoever  ;  the  praises  which  are  for  Ahura,  and  the  sacrifices 
which  spring  from  the  Good  Mind,  and  likewise  the  benignant  meditations 
inspired  by  Righteousness.  And  I  pray  that  propitious  results  may  be 
seen  in  the  lights. 

Hear  ye  then  with  your  ears  ;  see  ye  the  bright  flames  with  the 
Better  Mind.  It  is  for  a  decision  as  to  religions,  man  and  man,  each 
individually  for  himself.  Before  the  great  effort  of  the  cause,  awake  ye 
to  our  teaching  ! 

Thus  are  the  primeval  spirits  who  as  a  pair  combining  their  opposite 
strivings,  and  yet  each  independent  in  his  action,  have  been  famed  of 
old.  A  better  thing,  they  two,  and  a  worse,  as  to  thought,  as  to  word, 
and  as  to  deed.  And  between  these  two  let  the  wisely  acting  choose 
aright.     Choose  ye  not  as  the  evildoers  ! 

When  the  two  spirits  came  together  at  the  first  to  make  life,  and 
life's  absence,  and  to  determine  how  the  world  at  last  shall  be  ordered, 
for  the  wicked  the  worst  life,  for  the  holy  the  Best  Mental  State  :  he 
who  was  the  evil  of  them  both  chose  the  evil,  thereby  working  the  worst 
of  possible  results,  but  the  more  bounteous  spirit  chose  the  Divine 
Righteousness,  he  who  clothes  upon  himself  the  firm  stones  of  heaven 
as  his  robe.  And  he  chose  likewise  them  who  content  Ahiira  with  actions, 
which  are  performed  really  in  accordance  with  the  faith. 

And  between  these  two  spirits  the  Demon-gods  can  make  no  right- 
eous choice,  since  we  have  beguiled  them^.  As  they  were  questioning  and 
debating  in  their  council,  the  Worst  Mind  approached  them  that  he  might 
be  chosen.  And  thereupon  they  rushed  together  unto  the  Demon  of 
Fury,  that  they  might  pollute  the  minds  of  mortals.  Sacred  Books  of 
the  East,  vol.  xxxi.  pp.  28  sqq. 

There  is  a  dualism,  doubtless,  in  the  above  passage  ;  but  it  is 
the  dualism  of  experience,  not  the  dualism  of  faith.  In  faith, 
Ahura  Mazda  stands  supreme  ;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  world 
contains  both  the  good  and  the  bad,  and  these,  to  Zoroaster's 
eye,  proceed  each  from  the  spirit  which  is  the  primary  principle, 
respectively,  of  the  good  and  of  the  bad.  Without  saying  that 
this  is  a  perfect  philosophy,  it  is  yet  a  very  natural  philosophy, 

1  One  would  be  glad  to  escape  this  predestinarian  sentiment.  I  have  no  claim  to 
judge  whether  the  translation  is  or  is  not  correct ;  but  I  observe  that  this  clause  is 
absent  from  Professor  Moulton's  translation  in  Early  Zoroastrianism,  p.  350 :  "  Between 
these  twain  the  demons  also  chose  not  aright,  for  infatuation  came  upon  them  as 
they  took  counsel  together,  so  that  they  chose  the  Worse  Thought.  Then  they 
rushed  together  to  Violence,  that  they  might  enfeeble  the  world  of  man." 

I  should  add  that  in  transcribing  the  translation  given  by  Professor  Mills,  I  have 
felt  myself  at  liberty  to  omit  words  which  he  has  put  into  parentheses,  and  which 
I  understand  are  not  in  the  original,  in  cases  where  the  insertion  was  not  necessary 
for  the  understanding  of  the  passage. 

6—2 


84  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  [ch. 

and  does  not  hinder  the  unity  of  that  monotheism  which  is  the 
true  dominating  belief  expressed  in  the  Gathas.  In  the  sequel 
of  the  passage  the  aspiration  is  uttered  that  the  prophet  and 
those  whom  he  addresses  may  be  among  those  who  renovate  the 
world  ;  and  the  Yasna  concludes  as  follows  (I  will  quote  this  time 
from  Professor  Moulton's  translation  in  Early  Zoroastrianism, 
p.  351) : 

Then  truly  on  the  Lie  shall  come  the  destruction  of  delight ;  but 
they  that  get  them  good  name  shall  be  partakers  in  the  promised  reward 
in  the  fair  abode  of  Good  Thought,  of  Mazdah,  and  of  Right. 

If,  O  ye  mortals,  ye  mark  those  commandments  that  Mazdah  hath 
ordained — of  happiness  and  pain,  the  long  punishment  for  the  liars,  and 
blessings  for  the  righteous — then  hereafter  ye  shall  have  bliss. 

Most  strongly  before  Zoroaster's  mind  are  the  two  conceptions 
of  Good  and  Evil ;  most  strongly  does  he  urge  men  to  follow  Good, 
and  to  forsake  Evil.  And  when  we  ask  what  he  means  by  Good 
and  Evil,  we  see  that  by  Good  he  means  peaceful  industry,  and  by 
Evil  he  means  that  which  disturbs,  frustrates,  and  ruins  peaceful 
industry ;  and  he  is  convinced  that  as  there  is  a  good  God  who  helps 
the  peacefully  industrious,  so  there  are  false  deities  to  whom  the 
authors  of  ruin  and  destruction  apply  for  aid.  But  he  is  convinced 
also  that  the  conflict  between  Good  and  Evil  will  come  to  an  end, 

I  and  that  they  who  have  followed  good  shall  be  rewarded  ;  and 
ilj  from  other  expressions  which  he  uses  we  see  that  he  holds  this 

I  reward  to  be  eternal  ;  he  believes  in  immortality.  Thus  in 
Ydsna  XXXI.  6  we  read  (the  translation  is  by  Professor  Mills) : 

That  verily  .shall  be  the  best  of  all  words  to  him  which  the  AUwise 
one  will  declare  to  me  in  very  deed,  that  word  which  is  the  Mathra 
(or  coimsel)  of  Welfare  and  of  Immortality; 

and  again  in  §  21  of  the  same  Yasna : 

But  Ahura  Mazda  will  give  both  Universal  Weal  and  Immortality 
in  tho  fulness  of  his  Righteou.s  Order,  and  from  himself  as  the  head  of 
Dominion.  And  ho  will  likewise  give  the  Good  Mind's  vigorous  might  to 
him  who  in  spirit  and  deeds  is  his  friend. 

How  Zoroaster  arrived  at  the  conception  of  personal  immor- 
tality we  do  not  know  ;  but  it  is  not  an  unnatural  belief  for  men, 
and  the  (piaint  conception  of  the  Bridge  of  the  Separator  (the 
bridge  over  which,  after  death,  the  righteous  pass  safely,  but  from 
which  the  wicked  fall  into  hell)  is  likely  to  have  been  taken  by 
him  from  his  predecessors.  The  conceptions  however  of  a  reno- 
vation of  the  world,  and  of  an  era  when  the  world  shall  be  reno- 
vated, are  different  from  the  conception  of  personal  immortality  ; 


IV]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  85 

and  these  other  conceptions  are  much  more  likely  to  have  been 
original  with  him  than  the  conception  of  personal  immortality. 
The  conception  of  an  era  when  the  world  shall  be  renovated, 
and  when  goodness  shall  be  universal,  is  plain  in  the  Gathas  ;  the 
translation  of  Professor  Moulton  brings  it  out  rather  more  dis- 
tinctly than  the  translation  of  Professor  Mills,  but  there  is  no 
essential  difference  between  them,  as  will  be  seen  from  the 
following  clause  ( Ydsna  xxx.  8)  which  I  will  quote  in  both  versions ; 
Professor  Mills  writes  : 

Then,  O  Mazda  !  the  Kingdom  shall  have  been  gained  for  thee  by 
thy  Good  Mind  within  thy  folk. 

Professor  Moulton  translates  the  same  passage  thus : 

Then,  O  Mazdah !  at  thy  command  shall  Good  Thought  establish  the 
Dominion  in  the  Consummation. 

The  word  "consummation"  adds  a  point  to  the  thought,  but 
there  is  no  real  difference  between  the  two  translators  here. 
Again,  both  translations  mark  how  the  happy  state  at  which 
Zoroaster  aims  has  its  essence  in  "Good  Thought,"  in  rightness 
of  the  mind  ;  material  happiness,  though  a  real  thing,  comes 
afterwards.  This  sequence,  by  which  mind  and  soul,  not  place 
or  power,  are  the  first  constituents  of  the  heavenly  Hfe,  is  clear 
all  through  the  Gathas  ;  and  yet  mind  and  soul  act  naturally  ; 
happiness  is  the  natural,  not  the  artificial,  result  of  them.  Take,  as 
illustrative  of  this,  Yasna  xxxrv.  12,  13,  14: 

Teach  us  by  Right  the  paths  of  Good  Thought  that  are  blessed  to 
go  in — even  that  way  of  Good  Thought,  O  Ahura,  of  which  thou  didst 
speak  to  me,  whereon,  a  way  well  made  by  Right,  the  Selves  of  the  future 
benefactors  shall  pass  to  the  reward  that  was  prepared  for  the  wise,  of 
which  thou  art  determinant,  O  Mazdah.  That  precious  reward,  O  Mazdah, 
ye  will  give  by  the  action  of  Good  Thought  to  the  bodily  life  of  those  who 
are  in  the  community  that  tends  the  pregnant  cow.  Moulton's  Early 
Zoroastrianism,  p.  363. 

It  will  be  seen,  moreover,  from  this  passage,  that  the  "reno- 
vation" or  "consummation"  of  which  Zoroaster  speaks  is  not 
conceived  as  a  catastrophe  disturbing  the  existing  order,  but  as 
a  true  sequence  of  the  existing  order  rightly  directed.  How  the 
spirits  of  the  holy  departed  are  related  to  this  material  order  in 
its  renovation  and  fresh  excellence,  is  not  altogether  clear  ;  but 
we  must  not  expect  clearness  on  every  point  ;  and  to  ourselves 
the  same  question  may  occasion  a  difficulty. 

No  one,  I  am  sure,  can  study  the  passages  which  I  have  here 
quoted,  or  the  Gathas  as  a  whole,  without  admiration  for  the 


86  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  [en, 

mind  which  had  so  sane  an  apprehension  of  religion  and  morality, 
or  without  recognition  of  the  reaUty  of  Zoroaster,  or  Zarathustra, 
as  a  man.  This  conclusion  stands,  whatever  we  may  think  of  the 
questions  which  surround  this  name.  The  question,  in  what  cen- 
tury Zoroaster  lived  ;  the  question,  in  what  relation  he  stood  to 
the  Magi  ;  the  question,  who  the  Magi  were,  and  what  we  ought 
to  think  of  them  ;  the  question,  who  those  opponents  were, 
against  whom  Zoroaster  in  the  Gathas  inveighs  so  fiercely  ;  the 
question,  in  what  relation  he  stood  towards  those  kings  of  Persia, 
who  are  famous  in  history,  Cyrus  and  Cambyses,  Darius  and 
Xerxes  and  their  successors ;  these  questions  have  hardly  been 
touched  by  me  as  yet,  and  very  important  questions  they  are. 
But  those  who  differ  most  largely  on  these  points  may  yet  agree 
that,  somewhere  in  the  early  centuries,  long  before  the  Christian 
era,  there  lived  a  man  endowed  with  singular  clearness  of  spiritual 
vision,  and  rectitude  of  principle  ;  that  he  lived  somewhere  in 
the  great  country  called  Iran,  the  country  which  stretches  from 
the  river  Tigris  in  the  west  to  the  frontiers  of  India  in  the  east, 
and  from  the  Caspian  and  Aral  seas  in  the  north  to  the  Arabian 
sea  in  the  south.  This  man,  whom  we  must  call  Zoroaster  or 
Zarathustra,  left  the  memory  and  the  influence  of  his  spirit  to  a 
long  line  of  posterity,  through  that  literary  work  with  which  the 
present  chapter  has  so  far  been  concerned,  the  Gathas  ;  and 
though  his  spiritual  posterity  often  misinterpreted  him,  and  used 
his  authority  to  support  practices  and  beliefs  which  would  have 
been  abhorrent  to  him,  the  truth  which  he  proclaimed  survived, 
and  is  at  this  day  not  unworthily  embraced  by  the  few  who  accept 
him  as  their  master  in  religion. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  and  contrast  him  with  the  great 
teacher  with  whom  my  last  chapter  was  concerned,  Siddartha 
the  Buddha  ;  both  of  them  ardent  and  unselfish  ;  but  Buddha 
preaching  love  and  self-denial  rather  than  practical  work,  and 
indeed  laying  little  stress  on  the  work  of  the  hands  ;  Zoroaster 
on  the  contrary  laying  the  greatest  stress  on  peaceable  work,  and 
though  valuing  love,  not  laying  the  stress  on  love  which  Buddha 
did  ;  Buddha  thinking  of  Divine  beings  as  examples  rather  than 
as  helpers,  Zoroaster  appealing  with  all  the  fervour  of  his  soul  to 
the  Supreme  Deity  for  help.  It  will  be  seen  that  they  were  in 
some  degree  the  complements  of  each  other  ;  and  as  I  have 
spoken  of  the  defect  of  Buddha  as  being  the  undervaluing  of 
personal  desire,  so  I  may  speak  of  the  defect  of  Zoroaster  as  being 
a  want  of  tenderness  towards  enemies  ;  his  danger  was,  in  thinking 


IV]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  87 

of  the  enemy,  to  forget  the  man  ;  and  though  he  is  not  chargeable 
himself  with  cruelty  (as  far  as  we  know),  his  followers  afterwards 
were  not  so  blameless.  Both  Buddha  and  Zoroaster  strove  to 
make  their  teaching  universal,  a  teaching  for  all  men  ;  and  it  is 
especially  worthy  of  notice  that,  while  Iran  was  the  great  tract 
over  which  the  influence  of  Zoroaster  pecuHarly  extended,  and  to 
which  he  brought  his  first  message,  he  welcomed  those  who  were 
traditionally  the  foes  of  the  natives  of  Iran,  and  who  afterwards 
were  his  own  chief  foes,  the  Turanians  of  the  north.  Let  me 
give  the  passage  in  the  Gathas  {Yasna  xlvi.  12)  as  translated  by 
Professor  Williams  Jackson  : 

When  Asha  (Righteousness)  came  unto  those  that  are  to  be  named 
as  the  children,  and  children's  children,  of  Fryana,  the  Turanian  who 
zealously  doth  further  the  possessions  of  Armaiti  [increasing  Earth  by 
agricultural  activity]  and  when  Vohu  Manah  (Good  Thought)  took  up 
his  abode  with  them,  (then)  the  Lord  Mazda  is  announced  to  them  to 
their  comfort,     Zoroaster,  the  Prophet  of  Ancient  Iran,  pp.  83,  84. 

In  that  passage  national  narrowness  is  repudiated.  It  is 
not  to  be  denied  that  the  story  which  we  gather  from  the  prophetic 
dehverances  of  the  Gathas  is  obscure  and  fragmentary  ;  the 
detailed  personal  references,  such  as  that  which  speaks  of  the 
marriage  of  Zoroaster's  daughter,  or  the  quaint  mention  of  the 
"  ten  mares  with  a  stallion  and  a  camel"  which  Zoroaster  hopes 
to  have  {Yasna  xliv.  18),  do  not  throw  much  light  on  the  history  ; 
and  there  is  a  singular  absence  of  mention  of  places.  But  the 
main  purport  of  the  preaching  indicated  by  the  Gathas  must  be 
accepted  as  real  ;  and  now,  to  make  it  a  little  more  determinate, 
let  us  ask  who  were  the  enemies  against  whom  Zoroaster  had  to 
contend. 

The  enemies,  as  has  already  been  said,  were  not  merely 
hostile  through  their  habits  of  despoiling  and  ravaging  the 
peaceful  settlements,  but  also  in  their  religious  beUefs  and  senti- 
ments. Their  deities  are  called  the  Daevas  ;  when  the  "demon- 
gods"  were  spoken  of  in  the  extract  from  the  30th  Yasna 
given  above,  the  original  gives  "Daevas"  ;  and  all  through  the 
Gathas  the  Daevas  are  the  base  deities  who  work  ill.  Here  is 
the  description  of  them,  together  with  a  description  of  one  of 
their  worshippers  and  adorers,  from  one  of  the  earliest  Gathas 
{Yasna  xxxii.  3,  4,  5,  9,  10)  : 

But  ye,  ye  Daevas  all,  and  he  that  highly  honours  you,  are  seed  of 
the  Bad  Thought — yea,  and  of  the  Lie  and  of  Arrogance  ;    likewise  your 


88  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  [ch. 

deeds,  whereby  ye  have  long  been  known  in  the  seventh  region  of  the 
earth*. 

For  ye  have  brought  it  to  pass  that  men  who  do  the  worst  things 
shall  be  called  beloved  of  the  DaSveis,  separating  themselves  from  Good 
Thought,  departing  from  the  will  of  Mazdah  Ahura  and  from  Right. 

Thereby  ye  defrauded  mankind  of  happy  life  and  of  immortality,  by 
the  deed  which  he  and  the  Bad  Spirit  together  with  Bad  Thought  and 
Bad  Word  taught  you,  ye  Da^vas,  and  the  Liars,  so  as  to  ruin  mankind. 

The  teacher  of  evil  destroys  the  lore,  he  by  his  teachings  destroys 
the  design  of  life,  he  prevents  the  possession  of  Good  Thought  from  being 
prized.  These  words  of  my  spirit  T  wail  unto  you,  O  Mazdah,  and  to 
the  Right. 

He  it  is  that  destroys  the  lore,  who  declares  that  the  Ox  and  the  Sun 
are  the  worst  thing  to  behold  with  the  eyes,  and  hath  made  the  pious 
into  liars,  and  desolates  the  pastures  and  lifts  his  weapon  against  the 
righteous  man.     Moulton's  Early  Zoroastrianism,  pp.  355-357. 

It  will  be  evident  from  this  passage  that  the  Daevas  are  not 
the  product  of  any  chance  superstition  ;  they  are  deities  with  an 
accredited  worship.  But  the  whole  district  of  Iran,  in  some 
part  of  which  Zoroaster  was  preaching,  was  a  district  in  which 
the  old  Arjan  religion,  of  which  we  have  the  leading  example  in 
the  Hindu  sacred  writings,  was  dominant  in  the  earhest  times 
known  to  us  ;  and  in  the  Hindu  sacred  writings  the  Gods  are  called 
"Devas."  Is  it  not  plain,  then,  that  the  Daevas  and  the  Devas 
are  the  same  ?  And  it  follows  from  this  that  Zoroaster  in  the 
Gathas  was  attacking  the  deities  of  the  old  Aryan  religion,  which, 
probably  in  a  corrupted  form,  was  strong  in  Iran.  If  any  doubt 
could  remain  on  the  subject,  it  would  be  dispelled  by  the  fact 
that  Zoroaster  attacks  that  famous  divinity  of  the  Aryans, 
Haoma  (called  Soma  by  the  Hindus) ^  and  that  famous  Aryan 
hero,  Yima  son  of  Vivahvant  (called  by  the  Hindus  Yama  son 
of  Vivasvat).  The  old  Aryan  rehgion  had  its  drunken  orgies, 
its  slaughter  of  cattle  (nominally  for  sacrifices,  practically  for 
feasting  and  rioting)  ;  to  all  of  which  Zoroaster,  with  his  plain 
natural  piety,  was  steadfastly  opposed. 

These  followers  of  the  Aryan  religion  were  also,  in  no  slight 
degree,  nomads,  and  turbulent  and  aggressive  nomads  ;  and  it  was 
both  in  their  capacity  of  turbulent  nomads,  and  of  superstitious 
worshippers,  that  Zoroaster  attacked  them.  ?le  himself  had  been 
born  in  Media,  the  native  country  of  the  Magi  ;  but  the  traditions 
say,  and  the  best  opinion  hokls,  that  the  main  part  of  his  preaching 

'  (Ji'Uincr  interprets  thi.i  phrase  as  meaning  "  the  central  part  of  the  earth,  on  which 
men  live." 

*  Sec  Moulton'.M  Knrly  Zoroa-^trinnism.  p.  .'J.')7,  and  the  remark  there  quoted  from 
the  German  criti(;  liartholomac  :   and  variouM  phrases  from  the  32nd  and  48th  Yastias. 


IV]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  89 

was  in  the  east  of  Irani,  jjj  g^ch  countries  as  Bactria  and  Seistan, 
verging  on  the  borders  of  India  ;  perhaps  also  in  Parthia,  and  in 
Persis  (the  small  country  which  gave  its  name  to  the  Persians) 
to  the  south.  Somewhere  in  this  region  he  had  found  and  had 
converted  king  Vistaspa,  a  king  who  cannot  have  been  supreme 
in  Iran,  but  who  still  evidently  had  much  power  ;  and  with  the 
help  of  some  faithful  companions  of  his  own,  and  through  the 
political  power  exercised  by  king  Vistaspa,  Zoroaster  was  en- 
deavouring to  found  a  stable  and  peaceable  community,  pastoral 
and  agricultural,  and  a  rehgion  which  trusted  in  the  Most  High, 
and  which  looked  forward  to  better  things  in  the  future.  Such 
was  his  work  in  life.  If,  in  the  end,  he  was  not  altogether  suc- 
cessful in  so  mightj^  a  task,  can  we  be  very  much  surprised  ? 
Yet,  as  I  began  this  chapter  by  saying,  his  teaching  lives  to  the 
present  day,  and  lives  honourably.  Not  only  by  his  professed 
followers,  the  Parsis,  but  from  ourselves  also,  who  have  known 
other  teachers,  he  deserves  acknowledgment. 

It  remains  to  be  added,  what  I  have  already  half  implied, 
that  he  was  one  of  the  Magi.  This,  which  all  the  old  traditions 
say,  has  only  recently  been  doubted.  But  it  is  only  the  extreme 
difficulty  of  the  subject,  and  the  necessity  of  finding  some  exit 
out  of  a  thorny  labyrinth,  which  has  caused  it  to  be  doubted  ; 
and,  indeed,  it  should  not  be  doubted.  For  who  has  preserved 
the  writings,  the  sayings,  the  doings  of  Zoroaster  for  us,  but  the 
Magi  alone  ?  Who  had  the  smallest  interest  in  preserving  for 
us  the  writings,  the  sayings,  and  the  doings  of  Zoroaster,  but  the 
Magi  ?  Who  has  honoured  Zoroaster  with  supreme  honour,  but 
the  Magi ;  and  if  sometimes  the  honour  which  they  paid  to  him 
was  technical  and  formal,  is  not  that  a  misfortune  to  which  all 
religions  are  hable  ?  Nor  was  the  honour  which  the  Magi  paid 
to  Zoroaster  always  technical  and  formal.  It  is  so  in  the  Vendidad, 
that  unlucky  work  written  when  the  Magi  were  in  their  decay  ; 
but  in  the  later  Yasnas  he  is  referred  to  simply  as  the  author  of 
the  teaching  which  is  to  be  honoured  and  followed  ;  and  in  the 
Yasts,  in  spite  of  the  imaginative  nature  of  those  compositions, 
which  does  appear  in  the  following  passage,  I  do  not  think  it 
a  passage  breathing  a  wholly  unreal  sentiment  : 

We  worship  the  piety  and  the  Fravashi  (i.e.  the  underlying  eternal 
spiritual  being)  of  the  holy  Zarathustra ;  who  first  thought  what  is 
good,  who  first  spoke  what  is  good,  who  first  did  what  is  good  ;    who  was 

^  See  Professor  Williams  Jackson  in  his  Zoroaster,  the  Prophet  of  Ancient  Iran, 
pp.  182-225,  and  Professor  Moulton  in  Early  Zoroastrianism,  p.  84,  and  note  the  quo- 
tation from  Bartholomae  given  by  Moulton. 


90  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    PERSIA  [CH. 

the  first  Priest,  the  first  Warrior,  the  first  Plougher  of  the  ground  ;  who 
first  knew  ajid  first  taught.,.. In  whose  birth  and  growth  the  waters 
and  the  plants  rejoiced  ;  in  whose  birth  and  growth  the  waters  and  the 
plants  grew  ;  in  whose  birth  and  growth  all  the  creatures  of  the  good 
creation  cried  out.  Hail  !  Hail  to  us  !  for  he  is  bom,  the  Athravan,  Spitama 
Zarathustra.  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  200,  201  (trans- 
lation by  Darmest^ter). 

The  Farvardin  Yast,  from  which  the  above  passage  is  taken, 
is  the  Yast  which  takes  as  its  theme  that  peculiarly  Magian 
conception,  the  Fravashi,  the  underlying  spiritual  existence  of 
every  living  being,  which  is  the  eternal  element  in  every  living 
being  ;  therefore  this  Yast  must  be  a  Magian  composition  ;  and 
besides  the  word  "Athravan,"  the  word  for  "priest"  which  the 
Magians  pecuHarly  used,  ratifies  it  as  Magian.  Not  wholly 
insincere  do  I  think  it ;  and  as  far  as  this  passage  goes,  one 
might  more  reasonably  hold  Zoroaster  to  have  been  the  founder 
of  the  Magian  body,  than  not  to  have  belonged  to  them  at  all. 
Some  indeed  have  taken  him  to  have  been  the  founder  of  the 
Magi,  regarding  the  Magi  as  a  sect.  But  this  cannot  reasonably 
be  held  ;  the  teaching  of  the  Magi  cannot  be  derived  from  the 
teaching  of  the  Gathas ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  Gathas  are  the 
highest  point  of  that  religious  sentiment,  to  which  the  Magi 
could  not  reach,  but  towards  which  they  had  been  tending. 
We  must  then  hold  with  the  tradition,  that  Zoroaster  was  not 
the  founder  of  the  Magi,  but  that  he  was  one  of  the  Magi. 

And  now,  who  were  the  Magi  ?  Herodotus  tells  us  that  they 
were  a  tribe  of  the  Medes  ;  and  we  have  no  reason  to  doubt  iiis 
statement.  Whether  they  were  a  tribe  (as  we  may  rather  believe) 
or  a  sect,  they  had  great  religious  influence,  and  not  only  in  Media  ; 
not  only,  even,  in  Iran  ;  for  we  find  them  in  Babylon,  and  beyond 
Babylon.  They  preceded  Zoroaster  in  time,  as  a  consideration  of 
their  tenets  will  show ;  it  is  a  confirmation  of  this  when  we  find 
that  not  all  of  them  followed  Zoroaster,  or  honoured  him  with 
special  reverence.  The  Magi  of  Media  did  so  honour  him ;  the 
Magi  of  Babylon  treated  him  more  remotely.  It  is  beyond  doubt 
that  the  Magi  of  Babylon  came  originally  from  Media ;  but  there 
is  a  strong  distinction  between  them  and  the  Magi  of  Media.  The 
Magi  of  Media  worshipped  supremely  Ahura  Mazda,  to  whom 
Zoroaster  liiinself  (as  will  have  been  seen  from  the  Gathas)  gave 
his  devotion  and  addressed  his  prayers  ;  the  Magi  of  liabylon 
worshipped  supremely  Mithra,  the  God  who  originally  represented 
the  heavenly  light,  but  who  came  to  be  identified  with  the  vSun. 
Now  it  is  true  that  the  Magi  of  Media  did  recognise  and  worship 


IV]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  91 

Mithra,  and  sometimes  appear  to  put  him  even  as  equal  to  Ahura 
Mazda  ;  but  their  true  sentiment  is,  that  Ahura  Mazda  is  the 
sole  highest.  On  the  other  hand,  the  worship  of  Ahura  Mazda 
does  sometimes  filter  through  to  the  rehgion  of  the  Babylonian 
Magi  ;  but  not  very  much  ;  it  is  Mithra  to  whom  they  address 
their  chief  devotion.  It  was  from  the  Magi  of  Babylon  and  not 
from  the  Magi  of  Media,  that  that  Mithraism  was  descended 
which,  passing  through  Asia  Minor,  became  in  the  second  and 
third  centuries  of  our  era  the  chief  rival  of  Christianitj^  in  the 
Roman  empire.  To  confirm  this  important  point  let  me  quote 
two  paragraphs  from  the  splendid  and  comprehensive  work  of 
M.  Cumont  {Textes  et  Monuments  Figures  relatifs  aux  Mysteres 
de  Mithra),  published  at  Brussels  in  1899. 

De  tout  qiii  precede,  se  degage  done  un  r6siiltat  tres  net.  Soit  qu'on 
examine  les  caracteres  du  mithriaeisme,  soit  qu'on  suive  le  cours  de  son 
histoire,  on  aboutit  a  la  meme  conclusion  :  les  mysteres  qui  se  sont  repan- 
dus  dans  I'empire  romain  sont  les  heritiers  directs  du  mazdeisme,  tel  qu'il 
6tait  pratique  a  Babylone  sous  les  derniers  rois  Achem6nides. 

Le  mithriaeisme  n'est  done  pas,  comme  on  I'a  cru  h  tort,  une  altera- 
tion du  Zoroastrisme  avestique.  II  s'est  d6veloppe  k  c6t6  de  lui  et  ind6- 
pendamment  de  lui,  ils  sont  I'un  et  I'autre  tine  transformation  de  I'antique 
religion  des  tribus  iraniennes.     Cumont,  vol.  i.  p,  11. 

The  distinction  drawn  by  M.  Cumont  in  the  last  paragraph 
is  fundamental  ;  but  in  the  first  paragraph  one  word  should,  I 
think,  be  altered  ;  instead  of  "mazdeism,"  it  would  be  more 
exact  to  speak  of  "primitive  magianism"  as  the  source  of 
Mithraism.  If  mazdeism,  or  in  other  words  the  worship  of  Ahura 
Mazda,  had  been  the  source  of  Mithraism,  we  could  not  but  have 
found  Ahura  Mazda  (or  Auramazda)  recorded  on  the  Mithraic 
monuments  as  at  least  the  equal  of  Mithra  ;  whereas  in  reality 
the  Mithraic  monuments  hardly  recognise  Ahura  Mazda  at  all. 
But  it  is  evident  that  M.  Cumont  uses  the  term  "mazdeism" 
technically  to  express  the  Persian  religion  in  the  form  which  it 
took  when  it  had  separated  itself  from  the  original  Aryan  worship. 

I  must  not  linger  much  longer  over  the  Magi  of  Babylon,  for 
they  were  after  all  a  subordinate  branch  of  Magianism,  and  were 
not  Zoroastrian  at  all  ;  but  a  few  things  more  must  be  said 
about  them.     How  far  back  can  we  trace  them  ? 

Professor  Moulton  has  acutely  pointed  out  that  they  are 
found,  in  the  year  591  B.C.,  as  far  west  as  Jerusalem.  Here 
is  the  passage  in  which  the  prophet  Ezekiel  indicates  them  ; 
not  indeed  naming  them,  but  unmistakably  referring  to  their 
ceremonial.     The  passage  professes  to  be  a  vision,  but  the  facts 


92  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  [ch. 

mentioned  were  evidently  known  to  the  prophet  through  actual 
witnesses  : 

And  he  brought  me  into  the  inner  court  of  Jehovah's  house,  and 
behold,  at  the  door  of  the  temple  of  Jehovah,  between  the  porch  and  the 
altar,  were  about  five  and  twenty  men,  with  their  backs  toward  the  temple 
of  Jehovah,  and  their  faces  toward  the  east;  and  they  worshipped  the 
sun  toward  the  east.  Then  he  said  unto  me,  Hast  thou  seen  this,  O  son 
of  man  ?  Is  it  a  light  thing  to  the  house  of  Judah  that  they  commit  the 
abominations  which  they  conmiit  here  ?  for  they  have  filled  the  land  with 
violence,  and  have  turned  again  to  provoke  me  to  anger;  and  lo,  they 
put  the  branch  to  their  nose.    Ezekiel  viii.   16,  17. 

The  five  and  twenty  men  were  Jews,  as  is  implied  in  the 
propliet's  reproof ;  but  their  ritual  is  marked  as  Magian  by  their 
worshipping  the  sun,  and  "putting  the  branch  to  their  nose." 
The  branch  is  the  barsom  or  baresman,  a  bundle  of  thin  tamarisk 
rods,  which  the  Magian  worshipper  held  in  his  hand  when  sacri- 
ficing. Another  Bibhcal  passage  quoted  by  Professor  Moulton 
in  this  connexion  is  Jeremiah  xxxix.  3  and  13,  where  a  Babylonian 
public  officer,  called  the  "Rab-Mag,"  is  mentioned  among  the 
princes  who  entered  Jerusalem  after  its  capture  by  Nebuchad- 
nezzar ;  the  title  "Rab-Mag"  being  most  naturally  interpreted 
as  "Chief  of  the  Magi."  The  date  indicated  in  Jeremiah  is 
five  years  later  than  the  date  of  the  passage  in  Ezekiel ;  the 
two  passages  support  one  another,  and  the  extract  given  from 
M.  Cumont  supports  both  ;  and  as  the  Medians  and  Babylonians 
were  friendly  to  each  other  (both  having  been  enemies  to  Nineveh) 
the  whole  is  exceedingly  natural.  The  Sun,  it  will  be  seen,  was 
the  object  of  worship  to  the  Magi  of  Babylon  ;  and  Mithra, 
interpreted  as  the  Sun,  was  the  object  of  worship  to  the  Mithraists 
afterwards.  It  only  remains  to  add  that  the  Mithraists  of  the 
Roman  empire  were,  not  indeed  the  followers  of  a  true  religion, 
but  still  the  most  estimable,  except  the  philosophic  schools,  of  all 
the  heathen  rivals  and  opponents  of  early  Christianity  ;  so  that 
we  have  some  reason,  on  their  account,  to  think  well  of  Magianism 
in  its  original  form.  That  Mithraism  fell  before  Christianity,  is 
of  course  a  matter  neither  of  surprise  nor  of  regret ;  and  saying 
this,  I  now  leave  the  Magi  of  Babylon. 

Of  the  Magi  as  they  originally  came  into  prominence  in  Media, 
a  good  opinion  may  reasonably  be  held,  as  I  have  just  intimated. 
In  their  chcciuered  career  afterwards,  they  committed  serious 
sins,  and  ran  into  great  follies  ;  they  never  reached  to  anything 
like  the  height  of  Zoroaster,  their  greatest  example  ;  but  in 
their  first  origin   they   merit   some   approval,   and  in  the  after 


IV]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  93 

history  they  did  carry  down  for  the  recognition  of  posterity, 
though  very  imperfectly  represented  in  their  own  persons,  the 
teaching  of  Zoroaster.  That  teaching,  in  its  true  essence,  lay 
for  centuries  in  a  kind  of  trance  ;  the  Magi  were  the  guardians  of 
the  sleeping  form  of  it  ;  the  real  awakening  has  taken  place  in 
times  comparatively  modern. 

Without  seeking  exactly  to  determine  the  date  at  which  the 
Magi  of  Media  began  to  be  religious  teachers,  the  time  of  their 
largest  influence  and  purest  teaching  must  have  been  coincident 
with  the  time  of  the  greatest  sway  of  the  Median  empire,  that  is 
N  during  the  seventh  century  and  the  early  part  of  the  sixth  century 
/  before  the  Christian  era.  During  some  part  of  that  time  their 
missionaries  went  to  Babylon  ;  and  during  some  part  of  that  time 
the  greatest  of  their  missionaries,  Zoroaster,  went  from  Media  to 
the  east.  What  then,  irrespectively  of  Zoroaster,  was  the  Magian 
teaching  ? 

In  the  after  ages,  when  they  had  decKned  from  their  first 
virtue,  it  appears  as  a  kind  of  worship  of  the  elements,  mingled 
with  certain  fragments  of  polytheism,  derived  from  the  old  Aryan 
rehgion.  But  we  should  judge  them  unjustly  if  we  held  that  this 
was  the  character  of  the  primary  Magian  teaching.  The  Magi 
of  Babylon  had  never  any  of  those  unworthy  eccentricities  into 
which  the  Magi  of  Media  feU  in  the  time  of  their  decay,  and  of 
which  the  best  known  (and  most  enduring)  has  been  their  habit 
of  exposing  their  dead  to  be  devoured  by  birds  ;  and  therefore 
we  must  infer  that  the  original  Magi  of  Media  had  not  these  eccen- 
tricities either. 

The  primary  doctrine  of  the  Magi  of  Media  was  evidently  a 

kind  of  pantheism,  exemplified  to  us  in  many  of  the  later  Yasnas, 

from  which  I  will  quote  one  passage  : 

Yea,  we  worship  the  Creator  Ahixra  Mazda  and  the  Fire,  Ahura 
Mazda's  son,  and  the  good  waters  which  are  Mazda-made  and  holy,  and 
the  resplendent  sun  of  the  swift  horses,  and  the  moon  with  the  seed  of 
cattle  in  his  beams ;  and  we  worship  the  star  Tistrya^,  the  lustrous  and 
/  glorious  ;  and  we  worship  the  soul  of  the  Kine  of  blessed  endowment, 
and  its  Creator  Ahura  Mazda ;  and  we  worship  Mithra^  of  the  wide  pas- 
tiires  and  Sraosha  (Obedience)  the  blessed,  and  Rashnu^  the  most  just, 
and  the  good,  heroic,  beautiful  Fravashis  of  the  saints,  and  the  Blow-of- 
Victory  Ahiira-given.  And  we  worship  Raman-Hvastra^,  and  the  boun- 
teous Wind  of  blessed  gift,  and  its  Creator  Ahura  Mazda,  and  the  good 
Mazdayasnian  Religion,  and  the  good  Blessedness  and  Arstat^.  Sacred 
Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xxxi.  p.  256. 

1  Generally  held  to  be  Sirius. 

^  Mithra  is  the  heavenly  light;  Rashnu  is  the  Genius  of  Truthfulness;  Raman - 
Hvastra  is  the  Genius  that  gives  good  abodes  and  good  pastures ;  Arstat  is  Truthfulness. 


94  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  [ch. 

Now,  I  am  not  saying  that  that  passage  entirely  coincides 
with  the  original  doctrine  of  the  Magi  ;  for  the  mention  of  Ahura 
Mazda  shows  in  it  the  influence  of  Zoroaster.  But  it  is  charac- 
teristic, in  that  it  assembles  together  all  the  things  of  noble 
and  worthy  repute,  whatever  the  world  contains,  and  presents 
them  together,  not  separately,  to  be  worshipped  by  men.  In 
another  of  these  Yasneis  it  is  said,  "we  worship  all  good  men  and 
good  women"  ;  and  it  is  sometimes  added,  all  good  men  and 
good  women  who  have  suflFered  and  struggled  for  the  faith.  It 
is  a  matter  of  course,  that  when  men  were  bidden  to  worship 
such  an  assemblage  of  noble  and  excellent,  but  diverse,  beings, 
they  should  end  by  isolating  one  or  more  of  those  beings  as  most 
excellent,  and  worship  these  in  a  special  manner  ;  and  thus 
pantheism  would  slide  into  polytheism.  Hence  we  find  the  Magi 
of  Babylon  worshipping  the  Sun  ;  and  from  the  Yasts,  which 
are  the  latest  part  of  the  Avesta  (though  probably  embodying 
passages  from  old  Aryan  hymns,  which  would  be  quite  early) 
we  see  that  the  Magi  of  Media,  in  the  fourth  century  before  Christ, 
had  succumbed  to  a  distinct  polytheism.  But  the  earliest  Magian 
teaching  was  clearly  a  revolt  against  the  old  Aryan  polytheism, 
and  especially  against  idolatry.  We  learn  from  Herodotus 
(i.  131-132)  that  the  Persians  (and  with  the  Persians  he  must 
include  the  Medes)  had  neither  temples  nor  altars  nor  images  ; 
but  that  they  went  to  the  highest  peaks  of  the  mountains,  and 
there  offered  their  sacrifices.  Herodotus  wrote  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  fifth  century  before  Christ,  when  the  Magian  teaching 
had  been  long  in  existence ;  and  he  tells  us  that  the  Persians 
accounted  it  unlawful  to  offer  a  sacrifice  unless  one  of  the  Magi 
was  present  and  chanted  a  hymn  concerning  the  gods.  Evidently 
then  the  Persian  worship  of  which  Herodotus  speaks  was  a  worship 
according  to  the  Magian  religion.  Must  we  not  infer  that  it 
was  from  the  Magi  that  the  Persians  learnt  to  abstain  from  using 
temples,  altars  and  images  ?  From  whom  else  could  the  Persians 
have  learned  this  ?  The  nations  all  round  Iran,  with  no  exception 
that  we  know,  used  temples,  altars  and  images  :  thus  did  the 
Greeks,  the  Phoenicians,  the  Assyrians,  the  Babylonians  and  (when 
they  had  once  settled  down)  the  Hindus ^  Is  it  not  plain  that  it 
was  the  influence  of  the  Magi  which  led  the  Persians  not  to  use 
these  common  adjuncts  of  religious  worship  ?     Moreover,  it  is 

^  See,  in  the  second  chapk'r  of  the  present  work  (p.  44)  the  passage  quoted  by 
Professor  Macdonell  from  the  Rig-Veda,  mentioning  an  idol ;  and  the  reference  to  the 
Brahmanas. 


IV]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     PERSIA  95 

plain  why  the  influence  of  the  Magi  should  tend  this  way.  They 
were  directing  the  thoughts  of  worshippers,  not  to  deities  imagina- 
tively described,  but  to  realities,  behind  which  a  divine  spirit 
was  conceived  to  lie.  Just  as  aU  good  men  and  good  women 
had  their  Fravashis,  or  eternal  spiritual  representatives,  so  all  the 
great  and  wonderful  things  of  the  visible  universe  had  the  divinity 
behind  them,  and  that  divinity  was  to  be  worshipped.  This 
was  a  true  advance  on  the  Aryan  polytheism  ;  and  besides  its 
more  intrinsic  rationahty,  we  may  weU  beUeve  that  the  rehgious 
rites,  elaborate  and  turbulent,  which  the  Aryan  priesthood  en- 
couraged, offended  the  Magi,  who  were  more  spiritually  minded ; 
so  that  on  all  grounds  it  was  natural  for  the  Magi  to  urge  the 
abandonment  of  temples  and  altars  and  images,  and  we  must 
beheve  that  it  was  they  who  produced  this  amendment  in  the 
rehgion  of  the  Aryan  Medes  and  Persians. 

But  yet,  as  the  Magi  held  that  the  path  to  knowledge  of  the 
divinity  lay  through  the  visible  universe,  in  which  there  were 
many  objects,  some  more  and  some  less  splendid  and  wonderful, 
there  would  be  a  tendency  to  select  some  of  these  objects  as 
more  worthy  of  worship  than  others,  and  thus  the  way  back  again 
to  polytheism  was  not  shut  out  by  the  Magian  system.  It  was 
shut  out  by  Zoroaster  ;  but  Zoroaster  was  too  high  even  for  the 
Magi  properly  to  comprehend  him.  Hence  we  find  the  Magi  of 
Babylon  worshipping  the  Sun  ;  and  the  Magi  of  Media  paid 
special  regard  to  the  element  of  Fire,  and  in  a  sort  of  way  they 
made  an  idol  of  Fire ;  and  their  whole  attitude  towards  Fire, 
Earth,  Water,  was  in  the  end  not  rational.  But  they  began  ration- 
ally and  devoutly  ;  and  though  we  must  not  saj^  that  Zoroaster's 
teaching  was  exactly  the  development  of  the  teaching  of  the 
Magi,  for  it  sprang  from  a  purer  and  more  native  source  than 
that  from  which  the  teaching  of  the  Magi  sprang,  still  it  lay 
much  nearer  to  the  teaching  of  the  Magi  than  it  did  to  the  teaching 
of  the  old  Aryan  religion.  The  Magian  reUgion  was  intermediate 
between  the  Aryan  religion  and  Zoroaster  ;  in  recognising  this, 
we  have  the  surest  key  to  the  whole  subject  which  is  at  present 
obtainable. 

Let  me  say,  at  this  point,  that  I  agree  with  Professor  Moulton 
in  holding  that  the  Magi  were  not  Aryans,  not  of  the  ruling  race 
in  Media  ;  this  is  what  is  implied  by  Darius,  when  in  his  Behistun 
inscription  he  calls  Auramazda^  "the  god  of  the  Aryans";  he 
means  to  say  that  he  had  more  right  to  worship  Auramazda  than 

^  Auramazda  is  the  Persian,  Ahura  Mazda  the  Median  form  of  the  name. 


96  ANCIENT    RELIGION.    PERSIA  [ch. 

his  enemies,  the  Magi,  had.  (Yet  surely  Zoroaster,  even  if  he 
borrowed  the  name  from  the  Aryans,  had  made  the  right  to  use  it 
his  own.)  The  Magi,  though  not  of  the  ruHng  race,  were  evidently 
of  great  consequence  and  repute  ;  nor  have  we  any  reason  to  say 
that  hatred  was  felt  towards  them  as  long  as  the  Median  empire 
lasted  ;  it  was  afterwards  that  that  hatred  came.  Of  course, 
they  would  not  be  popular  with  the  Aryan  priesthood. 

Such  then  were  the  Magi  ;  but  before  I  pursue  their  career 
onwards  it  will  be  well  to  show  how  Zoroaster,  coming  from  the 
Magi,  treated  that  critical  point,  the  worship  of  Fire  and  of  the 
luminaries  of  heaven.  He  could  not  leave  the  teaching  of  his 
youth,  in  which  Fire  had  been  held  to  be  divine,  quite  without 
recognition  ;  and  all  through  the  Gathas  Fire  is  spoken  of  as  a 
kind  of  sacramental  sign  of  deity  ;  as  for  instance  in  such  phrases 
as  these  :  "the  felicity  that  is  with  the  heavenly  lights"  {Yasna 
XXX.  1);  "the  award  thou  givest  by  thy  Spirit  and  thy  Fire" 
Yasna  xxxi.  3);  "thy  Fire,  O  Ahura,  that  is  mighty  through 
Right"  {Ya,sna  xxxiv.  4).  But  he  never  approaches  in  the 
least  degree  to  the  worship  of  Fire  in  itself,  and  his  attitude 
towards  all  created  things  is  well  shown  in  the  following  verses 
( Yasna  xliv.  3,  4) : 

This  T  ask  thee,  tell  me  truly,  Ahura,  Who  is  by  generation  the 
Father  of  Right,  at  the  first  ?  Who  determined  the  path  of  sun  and  .stars  ? 
Who  is  it  by  whom  the  moon  waxes  and  wanes  again  ?  This,  O  Mazdah, 
and  yet  more,  I  am  fain  to  know. 

This  I  ask  thee,  tell  me  truly,  Ahura,  Who  upheld  the  earth  beneath 
and  the  firmament  from  falling?  Who  the  waters  and  the  plants  ?  Who 
yoked  swiftness  to  winds  and  clouds?  Who  is,  O  Mazdah,  creator  of 
Good  Thought? 

And  presently  he  answers  :  "I  strive  to  recognivse  by  these 
things  thee,  0  Mazdah,  creator  of  all  things  through  the  holy  spirit." 

Zoroaster,  then,  surpassed  his  own  tribe,  the  Magi  ;  and  the 
Magi,  when  their  hour  of  need  came,  fully  knew  and  acknowledged 
this.  What  they  thought  of  him  in  his  lifetime,  there  is  no  record 
to  say  ;  but  we  have  no  reason  to  think  that  they  were  ever 
adverse  to  him.  They  were  never  pure  monotheists,  as  he  was; 
but  there  was  nothing  in  the  way  of  honouring  him,  which  they 
could  do,  which  they  left  undone.  There  is  an  interesting  point 
in  their  history  to  which  I  may  here  refer  ;  an  old  king  Husravah, 
a  very  warlike  king,  who  must  be  a  Median  king  (for  it  is  said  of  him 
very  frequently^  that  he  was  the  first  who  united  the  Arjan  nations 

1  In  the  Yasts.  Our  information  about  this  king  comes  from  eomhinin;?  what  we 
read  of  him  in  the  Yaats  with  what  we  read  in  the  Pahlavi  writings. 


IV]  ANCIENT  RELIGION:   PERSIA  97 

together,  which  did  not  happen  before  the  Median  empire  began, 
and  did  happen  under  that  empire),  is  also  said  to  have  destroyed 
the  idol  temples  near  lake  Kaekasta,  which  is  what  is  now  called 
lake  Urumiah  in  Armenia,  (This  last  fact  is  stated  in  the  Pahlavi 
writings,  where  his  name  appears  as  Khusrob.)  Now  that  destruc- 
tion must  have  been  effected  by  the  counsel  of  the  Magi  ;  but  it 
is  plain  from  the  Behistun  inscription  that  the  Aryan  temples 
in  Media  were  not  destroyed  in  the  reign  of  king  Husravah  ; 
and  we  can  well  understand  that  the  Aryan  priests  would  have 
an  influence  in  the  centre  of  the  Median  empire  which  they 
would  not  have  in  the  outskirts  of  that  empire.  I  may  add 
that  the  account  in  Herodotus,  i.  102,  does  perhaps  justify  us  in 
identifying  king  Husravah  with  the  second  king  of  the  Median 
empire,  Phraortes. 

It  is  time  now  to  ask  :  What  are  we  to  hold,  as  near  as  we  can 
tell,  to  have  been  the  date  of  Zoroaster  ?  or,  to  put  a  kindred 
question,  what  was  the  date  of  Vistaspa,  the  king  to  whose 
help  Zoroaster,  and  the  teaching  of  Zoroaster,  owed  so  much  ? 
The  traditional  account,  which  we  find  in  the  Pahlavi  texts, 
gives  the  date  of  "the  coming  of  the  rehgion"  (or  in  other  words 
the  conversion  of  king  Vistaspa  by  Zoroaster)  either  as  300 
years  before  the  conquest  of  the  Persian  empire  by  Alexander 
of  Macedon,  or  (in  Bundahis,  xxxiv.),  with  a  slight  difference 
from  the  former  account,  272  years  before  the  death  of  Alexander. 
As  Alexander's  victory  at  Arbela  was  in  331  B.C.,  and  Alexander's 
death  in  323  B.C.,  these  statements  imply  that  the  conversion  of 
Vistaspa  took  place  either  in  631  B.C.  or  in  595  B.C.  But  the 
Pahlavi  texts  are  very  uncertain  authorities  in  the  matter  of 
dates  ;  and  though  we  cannot  ignore  them,  we  must  not  reckon 
them  to  be  our  most  important  guides.  What,  then,  is  our  most 
important  guide  ?  To  myself,  the  tone  of  the  Behistun  inscription 
appears  to  be  that  piece  of  evidence  which  is  hardest  to  overthrow, 
and  which  as  a  matter  of  fact  has  not  been  overthrown  by  any 
other  piece  of  evidence  now  in  the  field.  As  to  the  Behistun 
inscription  in  all  its  bearings,  I  must  give  an  account  of  that 
later  on  ;  I  am  now  treating  it  simply  as  a  piece  of  composition 
of  the  famous  king  Darius,  and  as  showing  the  mind  of  Darius. 
For  the  present  it  is  enough  to  say  that  it  is  the  commemoration, 
written  by  Darius  himself,  of  that  great  series  of  victories  by  which 
he,  in  the  year  521  B.C.  or  shortly  afterwards,  won  for  himself 
the  royal  authority  over  the  whole  extent  of  the  Persian  empire, 
which  had  been  thrown  into  disorder,  first  by  the  misrule  of 


98  ANCIENT  RELIGION:    PERSIA  [ch. 

Cambyses,  and  next  by  the  treacherous  rebellion  of  the  Magi — 
that  first  sin  of  the  Magi,  the  seed  of  many  calamities  in  the  after 
time. 

Most  cordially  do  I  agree  with  Meyer  and  Geldner  and  Moulton, 
that  the  Behistun  inscription  shows  Darius  to  have  been  an 
ardent  follower  of  Zoroastrianism  ;  and  with  the  explanation  i, 
by  Professor  Moulton,  of  the  difficulties  which  have  been  thought 
to  lie  against  the  belief  that  this  was  the  case.  When  I  say,  however, 
that  Darius  was  an  ardent  follower  of  Zoroastrianism,  I  do  not 
exactly  mean  that  he  was  an  ardent  follower  of  Zoroaster.  There 
is  a  difference  between  the  two  propositions  which  I  am  putting 
side  by  side.  In  all  the  long  Behistun  inscription,  Darius  never 
mentions  Zoroaster  ;  what  a  contrast  to  the  profuse  mention  of 
Zoroaster's  name  in  the  Later  Avesta,  written  by  the  Magi  ! 
Ought  not  Darius  to  have  at  least  shown  that  he  knew  the  name 
of  that  teacher  to  whom  he  was  so  much  indebted  ?  if  not  in  the 
Behistun  inscription,  at  any  rate  in  the  inscription  on  his  own 
tomb,  which  still  exists  ?  But  he  never  does.  What  is  the 
explanation  ? 

The  explanation,  and  the  sufficient  explanation,  of  the  silence 
of  Darius,  is  that  Zoroaster  had  been  one  of  the  Magi,  the  enemies 
whom  Darius  had  just  subdued.  It  is  the  counterpart  of  that 
silence  which  the  Avesta,  and  the  Pahlavi  texts  too,  preserve 
towards  Darius  himself  ;  they  ignore  him  utterly.  I  need  add 
no  more  to  this  most  natural  reason  for  a  silence  which  in  itself 
might  puzzle  us  ;  and  I  must  now  call  attention  to  the  phrases 
by  which  the  Zoroastrianism  of  Darius  is  shown  to  us. 

In  all  heathen  literature,  I  feel  sure  that  there  is  no  parallel 
to  the  extraordinary  insistence  of  Darius,  from  beginning  to  end 
of  the  Behistun  inscription,  on  his  indebtedness  to  Auramazda, 
his  devotion  to  Auramazda.     Take  one  example  : 

Thus  saith  Darius,  the  king :  Auramazda  hath  granted  unto  me 
this  empire.  Auramazda  brought  me  help,  until  I  gained  this  empire  ; 
by  the  grace  of  Auramazda  do  1  hold  this  empire. 

Elsewhere  he  says,  in  relation  to  one  of  the  arduous  conflicts 
in  which  he  was  engaged  :  "I  prayed  to  Auramazda  ;  Auramazda 
brought  me  help."  The  recurrence  of  these  phrases  is  incessant. 
He  does  indeed  barely  recognise  other  deities  ;  this  much  he  does 
allow  to  the  feeUng  of  his  own  race,  the  Arj'^ans  ;  but  Auramazda 
alone  has  his  heart.  (Jan  we  imagine  a  characteristic  that  more 
recalls  the  Gathas  ?     Scarcely  less  does  his  scorn  of  lying  recall 

»  See  Moulton'a  Karly  Zoroastrianism,  pp.  48-50,  131,  136,  431-433. 


IT]  ANCIENT  RELIGION:   PERSIA  99 

the   Gathas.     In  the   Gathas,   "the  Lie"   is   the  brief  symbol 
whereby  the  enemy  is  denoted.     Now  hear  Darius  : 

Thus  saith  Darius,  the  king :  Thou  who  mayest  be  king  hereafter, 
beware  of  lies  :  the  man  who  is  a  Uar,  destroy  him  utterly,  if  thou  think- 
est,  "  thereby  shall  my  land  remain  whole." . . . 

Whosoever  shall  read  this  inscription  hereafter,  let  that  which  I 
have  done  be  believed  ;  thou  shalt  not  hold  it  to  be  lies.  Thus  saith 
Darius,  the  king :  I  call  Auramazda  to  witness  that  it  is  true  and  not 
lies  ;    all  of  it  have  I  done. 

Moreover,  whenever  he  speaks  of  one  of  the  false  pretenders 
to  royalty,  he  says  of  him  briefly,  "he  Hed." 

Whence  comes  this  very  clear  and  remarkable  resemblance 
of  the  utterance  of  Darius  to  the  utterances  of  Zoroaster  in  the 
Gathas  ?  There  may,  possibly,  have  been  a  copy  of  the  Gathas 
in  the  palace  of  Darius  ;  but  if  there  was,  we  should  have  to  ask 
how  it  came  there.  In  any  case  a  natural  explanation  is  given 
us,  if  the  Vistaspa,  whom  from  the  Gathas  we  know  to  have  been 
the  protector  of  Zoroaster,  and  the  promoter  of  Zoroaster's  cause, 
was  the  same  as  that  other  Vistaspa,  whom  Darius  mentions 
in  the  Behistun  inscription  as  his  own  father^.  If  this  was  the 
case,  then  we  perceive  that,  with  very  slight  knowledge  of  Zoroaster 
personally,  and  probably  with  very  Httle  sense  of  the  need  of 
gratitude  to  him,  Darius  would  have  drunk  in  from  his  childhood 
the  maxims  of  Zoroaster;  his  own  father  would  have  been  the 
intermediary.  That  is  a  satisfactory  account  of  the  resemblance 
which  I  am  bringing  forward ;  and  if  we  remember  how  very 
soon  the  sincerest  religious  feeling  changes  its  aspect,  as  it  is 
handed  down  from  generation  to  generation,  I  do  not  think 
we  shall  find  any  other  account  that  satisfies  the  conditions. 
I  think  too  that  this  account,  though  not  absolutely  in  accord 
with  the  date  implied  by  the  Pahlavi  texts  to  which  I  referred 
above,  is  not  so  far  different  from  that  testimony  as  to  occasion 
any  objection  on  that  ground.  I  am  supposing  that  what  the 
Pahlavi  texts  call  "the  coming  of  the  religion,"  that  is  the  con- 
version of  king  Vistaspa  by  Zoroaster,  took  place  about  570  B.C. 
And  now  let  me  go  back  to  the  history  of  the  Magi. 

All  Media,  and  the  Magi  no  doubt  among  other  Medes,  had 
been  thrown  into  great  disorder  by  an  invasion  of  the  wild 
northern  tribes  (called  in  the  inscriptions  the  Ummum-Manda) 
which  took  place  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  seventh  century  before 

^  This  identification  is  much  questioned.  It  was  made  by  Ammianus  Marcellinus, 
the  eminent  historian  of  the  fourth  century  a.d.  ;  who,  from  his  birth  at  Antioch  and 
his  military  journeys  in  the  east,  was  likely  to  have  real  knowledge  of  Zoroastrian 
tradition.     I  will  say  more  about  it  in  an  Appendix  to  this  chapter. 

7—2 


100  ANCIENT  RELIGION:   PERSIA  [ch. 

Christ ;  and  as  we  now  know  from  the  inscriptions  that  Astyages, 
who  used  to  be  called  the  last  Median  king,  and  who  became  king 
in  594  B.C.  was  really  one  of  these  Ummum-Manda,  it  is  possible 
that  the  disorder  still  in  some  degree  continued  all  through  the 
first  forty  years  of  the  sixth  century,  Zoroaster,  in  the  east  of 
Iran,  would  for  the  present  be  out  of  the  field  of  this  disorder  ; 
and  his  success  in  his  own  field  was  evidently  great.  That 
Vist&spa  was  a  young  man  at  the  time  of  his  conversion  is 
probable  from  the  Vistasp  Yast  (which  not  only  speaks  of  him 
as  young,  but  implies  that  he  had  at  that  time  no  children) ; 
some  loose  expressions  in  the  Pahlavi  texts,  which  imply  that  he 
was  then  middle-aged,  need  not  be  regarded.  Briefly  let  me 
mention  the  end  of  Zoroaster,  as  it  is  handed  down  to  us.  The 
Iranian  tradition  is  fairly  unanimous  that  he  was  slain,  when  over 
\  seventy-seven  years  old,  by  a  Turanian ;  and  there  is  also  evidence, 
I  which  though  late  is  not  to  be  despised,  that  he  was  slain  in  a 
;  war  caused  by  an  invasion  of  the  northern  (or  Turanian)  tribes, 
)  after  they  had  taken  the  city  of  Balkh,  the  capital  of  Bactria, 
where  Zoroaster  then  was.  The  date  of  this  event  would  seem 
to  have  been  after,  rather  than  before,  540  B.C. 

But  after  the  death  of  Zoroaster,  I  have  to  narrate  the  fall  of 
the  Magi ;  their  fall  in  spiritual  worth,  as  well  as  in  outward  fortune. 
Outward  misfortune  came  upon  them  first,  and  they  shrank  under 
it.  What  happened  was  this.  Media,  as  I  have  said,  was 
probably  weakened  by  the  northern  invasion ;  but  the  conquest  of 
Media  by  Cyrus,  king  of  Elam,  which  took  place  in  559  B.C.,  pro- 
duced a  direr  humiliation.  That  Cyrus  was  a  Zoroastrian  in  any 
exclusive  sense,  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  believe,  since  the 
discovery  of  his  Cylinder  Inscription,  in  which,  after  conquering 
Babylon,  he  records  his  devotion  to  Marduk,  the  Babylonian 
deity,  without  any  mention  of  Ahura  Mazda,  or  Auramazda,  at 
all.  We  must  not  however  argue  that  because  Cyrus,  a  politic 
ruler,  worshipped  Marduk  at  Babylon,  he  would  therefore  not 
worship  Ahura  Mazda  in  Iran,  with  which  he  was  so  much  more 
intimately  connected  by  birth  and  natural  associations  ;  in  all 
probability  he  did  so,  though  we  cannot  regard  him  as  devoted 
in  heart  and  soul  to  Ahura  Mazda.  Neither,  of  course,  can  we 
account  Cambyses,  the  madly  despotic  son  of  Cyrus,  as  in  any 
true  sense  the  worshipper  of  that  God  to  whom  Zoroaster  ad- 
dressed his  fervent  prayers.  Yet  we  have  evidence,  which  it  is 
impossible  to  resist,  that  Cambyses  was  in  a  certain  sense  a 
fanatic  follower,  probably  of  Zoroaster,  certainly  of  the  Magi. 


IV]  ANCIENT  RELIGION:   PERSIA  101 

We  must  infer  this  from  the  fact  of  which  we  are  informed  in 
the  Aramaic  papyri  recently  discovered  near  Assuan  in  Egypt, 
that  Cambyses,  when  he  destroyed  the  other  temples  round  that 
place,  left  the  Jewish  temple  unharmed.     Why  should  Cambyses 
have  drawn  this  distinction,  except  because  the  Jewish  temple 
had  no  idol  in  it  ?     That  would  be  in  accordance  with  the  prin- 
ciples of  Magianism  ;    and  certainly  we  must  suppose  that  in 
530  B.C.  Magi  were  abundant  in  Iran,  and  that  they  had  on  the 
whole  the  predominance  over  the  ancient  Aryan  religion.     Cam- 
byses then  would  have  every  opportunity  of  falling  under  their 
influence,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  he  did  so.     This  did 
not  imply  that  they  could  influence  him  for  good  ;    his  whole 
life  showed  a  recklessness  of  conduct  which  has  seldom  been 
surpassed.     But  in  a  certain  sense  Cambyses  followed  the  Magi, 
in  the  superficiahties  of  religion  ;   and  the  moment  was  one  when 
the  Magi  of  Media  were  singularly  liable  to  temptation.     They 
j  had  lost  the  power  which  they  possessed  under  the  Median  kings 
of  the  seventh  century,  for  those  Median  kings  no  longer  existed  ; 
\    and  they  looked  for  power  wherever  they  could  find  it.     This 
it  was  which  made  them  now  seize  the  great  name  of  Zarathus- 
tra,  who  had  acquired  such  authority  far  outside  the  bounds  of 
Media;  henceforth,  without  the  least  conscious  insincerity,  they 
professed  a  profound  allegiance  to  him,  in  their  prayers,  in  their 
legends,  in  their  legislation.     But  henceforth,  also,  they  attached 
themselves  to  the  Persian  kings,  unless  (as  the  event  showed) 
there  was  a  chance  of  rebelling  against  those  kings  successfully  ; 
and  then  they  rebelled.     This  dangerous  strain  of  temperament 
soon  worked  evil.     It  is  probable  that  we  must  attribute  to  the 
Magi  that  sinister  counsel  which  Herodotus  attributes  to  the 
royal  judges  of  Persia,  when  Cambyses  asked  whether  he  might 
lawfully  marry  his  sister ;   the  answer  was,  that  they  (the  judges 
or  more  probably  the  Magi)  found  no  law  authorising  marriage 
with  a  sister,  but  that  they  did  find  a  law  authorising  the  king 
of  Persia  to  do  whatever  he  pleased  !     From  this  origin,  it  would 
seem,   came   that   Magian   custom   of   regarding   marriage   with 
sisters  (nay  even  with  mothers  and  daughters)  a  virtuous  act. 
There  is  some  doubt  how  far  the  prevalence  of  this  custom 
reached  ;   but  as  to  its  existence  among  the  followers  of  the  Magi 
in  ancient  times  there  seems  no  doubt. ^     If  I  have  done  injustice 
to  the  Magi  in  supposing  that  their  complaisance  to  Cambyses 

^  The  learned  essay  of  E.  W.  West  (Appendix  m.  in  volume  xvin.  of  Sacred  Books 
of  the  East)  is  the  most  complete  and  impartial  investigation  existing  on  this  subject.  ' 


102  ANCIENT  RELIGION:   PERSIA  [ch. 

first  originated  this  custom  (and  one  must  not  press  too  strongly 
an  uncertain  charge),  at  all  events  the  act  of  Cambyses,  for 
some  reason  taken  up  by  the  Magi,  appears  the  most  likely  origin 
of  it. 

The  Magi,  it  is  probable,  flattered  Cambyses ;  it  is  certain 
that  they  rebelled  against  him.  His  unpopularity  gave  them  the 
opportunity  ;  and  their  minds  were  seething  with  discontent  and 
ambition  ;  and  lastly,  his  secret  murder  of  his  brother  Smerdis 
enabled  them  to  induce  one  of  their  own  number  to  personate 
Smerdis,  so  that  they  could  rebel  professedly  in  his  cause.  The 
false  Smerdis  soon  acquired  a  great  following  ;  the  Medes,  mind- 
ful of  their  lost  sovereignty,  backed  him  up ;  and  the  Magi 
showed  their  religious  animus  by  destroying  many  temples  in 
Media,  no  doubt  those  of  the  old  Aryan  religion.  Cambyses, 
who  was  in  Egypt,  set  out  to  return  to  put  down  the  rebellion  ; 
but  that  return  was  never  accomplished.  The  Behistun  inscrip- 
tion tells  us  that  he  slew  himself  ;  Herodotus  says  that  his  death 
was  the  result  of  an  accident,  the  point  of  his  sword  piercing 
his  thigh  as  he  mounted  his  horse ;  in  any  case  he  died. 

It  would  seem  that  at  first  the  bold  acts  of  the  Magi  stunned 
the  Persian  nobility,  for  we  read  in  Herodotus  (ni.  67)  that  the 
false  Smerdis  ventured  to  promise  his  subject^  freedom  from 
liability  to  military  service,  and  from  taxation,  for  the  space  of 
three  years  :  on  the  other  hand,  he  slew  those  who  had  known 
the  true  Smerdis,  in  order  that  the  truth  might  not  be  discovered. 

But  that  so  treacherous  an  act  in  the  end  failed,  can  occasion 
us  neither  surprise  nor  regret.  After  eight  months  Darius,  who 
appears  to  have  been  recognised  as  the  representative  of  the 
Achaemenian  family,  with  the  help  of  his  friends  slew  the  false 
Magian  and  those  who  were  supporting  him  ;  and  the  Persians, 
taking  heart  from  the  death  of  their  chief  foe,  gathered  in  numbers 
and  slew  all  the  Magi  on  whom  they  could  lay  their  hands,  an 
event  afterwards  commemorated  by  the  Persians  in  the  annual 
festival  of  the  Magophonia,  or  slaughter  of  the  Magi. 

But  the  result  of  this  victory  was,  at  first,  far  from  being 
the  attainment  of  peace.  All  over  the  Persian  empire  men  had 
hoped,  it  would  seem,  that  the  reign  of  the  Great  King  was  over, 
and  that  everv  nation  was  free  again  :  and  all  over  the  Persian 
empire  pretenders  sprang  up,  declaring  that  they  were  legitimate 
sovereigns.  Then  did  the  genius  of  Darius  assert  it.self.  What- 
ever the  force  of  the  subject  nations,  the  superior  discipline 
belonged  to  the  Persians  ;    and  Darius  appealed  not  in  vain  to 


IV]  ANCIENT  RELIGION:  PERSIA  103 

his  ministers,  his  generals,  in  every  quarter.  Among  those 
generals,  we  are  interested  to  hear,  was  his  father  Vistaspa,  who 
was  governing  in  Parthia^.  It  is  clear  that  naturally  Vistaspa 
rather  than  his  son  Darius  would  have  been  the  monarch  of  the 
Persian  empire,  the  king  of  kings  ;  but  Vistaspa,  on  the  reckon- 
ing which  I  have  followed,  would  be  nearly  seventy  years  of 
age ;  and  no  doubt  he  was  quite  willing  to  leave  this  most  strenu- 
ous warfare  to  his  vigorous  son.  Father  and  son  worked  loyally 
together,  and  I  cannot  but  think  that  this  is  some  evidence  that 
there  was  a  religious  tie,  as  well  as  a  natural  tie,  between  them. 
Not  only  in  Parthia,  but  everywhere,  were  the  rebels  subdued, 
and  speedily.  It  cannot  be  said  that  Darius  was  merciful,  in  his 
victory,  to  the  leaders  of  the  rebels  ;  but  cruelty  was  in  those 
days  hardly  reckoned  as  a  vice,  and  even  in  the  Gathas  it  is 
impossible  to  say  that  mercy  to  enemies  is  inculcated  as  a  virtue, 
much  less  as  a  duty. 

A  great  man  we  must  acknowledge  Darius  to  have  been,  and 
it  was  not  an  unworthy  thing  of  him  to  commemorate  his  victory 
in  the  way  in  which  he  did  commemorate  it.  On  the  face  of  a 
precipice,  inaccessible  to  the  ordinary  wayfarer,  high  up  on  the 
road  between  Babylonia  and  the  cities  of  Media,  he  caused  to 
be  carved  in  three  languages  that  inscription  which,  from  the 
name  of  the  place,  is  called  the  Behistun  inscription  ;  to  which 
1  have  so  often  referred  in  the  present  chapter.  There  may  stiU 
be  seen  the  arrow-like  letters  which  to  the  skilled  student  reveal 
the  names  of  Darius  himself,  his  ancestors  and  his  family,  his 
enemies  in  all  the  provinces  where  he  had  enemies,  his  friends 
and  his  servants,  the  punishments  of  his  chief  enemies,  and  many 
moral  reflections,  some  of  which  I  have  quoted  above,  and  reiter- 
ated expressions  of  religious  trust ;  and  also  his  restoration  of  the 
shrines  which  the  Magi  had  destroyed,  and  which  Darius  now 
restored,  as  we  must  suppose,  because  they  belonged  to  the  Aryan 
race,  the  race  of  nobles  ;  not  because  Darius  agreed  with  the 
worship  which  they  represented.  The  whole  inscription,  in  spite 
of  its  repetitions,  has  a  nervous  conciseness,  indicating  a  strong 
will  and  a  commanding  character. 

This  great  inscription  was  first  copied  in  the  year  1835  by  a 
young  English  officer,  afterwards  known  as  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson; 
who  was  let  down  by  a  basket  from  the  top  of  the  rock,  and,  not 
without  risk  of  life,  took  squeezes  of  the  inscriptions  ;  and  who 
afterwards  had  the  principal  share  in  interpreting  them.     Other 

^  We  know  this  on  the  indisputable  authority  of  the  Behistun  inscription. 


104  ANCIENT  RELIGION:  PERSIA  [oh. 

scholars  have  surveyed  the  rock  from  below  ;  but  the  American 
professor  Williams  Jackson  is  the  only  one  who  has  imitated 
Rawlinson's  feat,  and  seen  the  inscription  at  close  quarters,  and 
taken  squeezes  from  it. 

The  general  history  of  Darius  as  a  king  does  not  concern  the 
present  chapter  ;  but  one  more  point  must  be  mentioned  relating 
to  him  ;  namely,  that  he  was  the  institutor  of  the  Calendar 
which,  handed  down  from  age  to  age,  is  at  this  day  used  by  the 
Persian  Parsis.  The  evidence  for  this  fact  is  too  complex  to  be 
given  in  the  present  chapter  ;  it  was  first  perceived,  with  great 
acuteness,  by  E.  W.  West,  whose  disquisition  on  the  subject  will 
be  found  on  pages  xlii-xlvii  of  his  Introduction,  in  vol.  xlvii. 
of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  and  the  proof  has  been  further 
elaborated  by  Professor  Moulton,  on  pages  431-434  of  Early 
Zoroastrianism,  who  also  remarks  how  entirely  the  names  of  the 
months  in  the  Calendar  suit  the  character  of  Darius  as  "a 
genuine  and  earnest  follower  of  Zarathushtra." 

But  I  must  leave  Darius  ;  it  is  with  the  Magi,  the  continua- 
tors  of  the  religion  of  Zoroaster,  that  I  am  now  concerned.  They 
had  failed,  and  failed  deservedly,  in  their  attempt  to  win  political 
supremacy  in  Iran  ;  they  were  reduced  to  the  exercise  of  religious 
authority,  if  they  could  maintain  even  that ;  and  with  the  hatred 
of  the  Persians  and  the  memory  of  their  own  recent  failure 
against  them,  it  was  difficult  to  maintain  religious  authority. 
The  name  of  Zarathustra  doubtless  helped  them  greatly. 
Zoroaster  had  won  the  deep  respect  of  Aryan  kings  ;  he  had  not 
been  implicated  in  any  failure,  in  any  dishonour ;  the  Magi 
could  take  his  name  as  their  title  to  honour,  and  they  did  so, 
in  almost  every  production  of  their  pen.  Of  their  own  name 
they  were,  alas,  not  undeservedly  ashamed;  their  own  name 
occurs  only  once  in  the  whole  Avesta,  and  there,  characteristically 
enough,  it  occurs  in  the  phrase,  "  one  who  hates  the  Magi."  We 
must  not  blame  the  Magi  if  something  artificial,  something  not 
quite  disinterested,  mingled  with  their  reverence  for  Zoroaster. 
They  had  some  true  reverence  for  him,  as  I  showed  in  the  quota- 
tion which  I  made  from  the  Farvardin  Yast. 

More  to  be  blamed  were  the  Magi  for  the  superstitions  by 
which  they  tried  to  increase  their  religious  authority.  They 
knew  the  curious  principle  that  religious  authority  acquires 
weight  with  the  generality  of  men,  not  so  much  by  the  good 
which  it  can  be  shown  to  have  effected  (for  to  determine  this 
is  a  delicate  and  difficult  matter),  but  by  the  demands  which 


IV]  ANCIENT  RELIGION:   PERSIA  105 

it  makes,  concerning  which  there  need  be  no  doubt  at  all.  From 
this  time  forth  therefore  the  Magi  insisted,  and  insisted  more 
and  more  as  time  went  on,  on  those  prohibitions  as  to  burying 
or  burning  dead  bodies,  which  are  perhaps  the  best  known  thing 
connected  with  the  Parsi  religion  at  the  present  day ;  so  much 
more  easy  is  it  to  remember  a  quaint  superstition  than  a  noble 
religious  example  !  In  the  time  of  Herodotus,  the  Magi  had  not 
succeeded  in  inducing  the  Persians  to  refrain  from  burying  the 
dead.  They  themselves,  and  doubtless  their  ardent  adherents, 
exposed  their  dead  to  be  eaten  by  birds. 

Then  too,  the  principle  that,  in  the  things  which  we  see  and 
know,  a  good  spirit  and  a  bad  spirit  are  at  war  together,  and 
produce  good  and  bad  fruits  respectively,  this,  which  Zoroaster 
had  seen  in  experience,  the  Magi  took  as  an  abstract  principle, 
and  marvellous  indeed  were  the  results  which  they  deduced  from 
it !  All  living  creatures  were  divided  into  the  creatures  of  Ahura 
Mazda,  and  the  creatures  of  Angra  Mainyu  or  Ahriman.  The 
reason  of  the  selection,  in  either  case,  was  obscure ;  the  result 
was  clear  in  the  extreme.  The  hedgehog  was  one  of  the  creatures 
of  Ahura  Mazda  ;  if  you  killed  a  hedgehog,  purification  from  such 
a  sin  was  not  to  be  had  by  a  punishment  less  than  a  thousand 
stripes.  (Darmesteter  has  suggested,  probably  with  truth,  that 
a  way  was  eventually  found  to  commute  the  stripes  for  a  money 
payment.)  The  tortoise  was  a  creature  of  Angra  Mainyu  ;  if 
you  killed  a  tortoise,  all  your  sins  of  thought,  word,  and  deed 
were  instantaneously  forgiven.  With  follies  like  this  is  the 
greater  part  of  the  Vendidad  filled.  Could  a  great  rehgion  sink 
lower  ?  Yet  even  the  Vendidad  has  redeeming  parts  ;  if  the 
first  four  Fargards  and  the  last  four  Fargards  alone  had  been 
preserved,  we  should  not  have  thought  so  badly  of  it.  The 
intermediate  Fargards  are  those  which  sink  it  into  the  depths. 
But  let  me  by  preference  quote  one  of  the  redeeming  passages  : 
here  is  one  from  the  third  Fargard  (23-29)  : 

O  Maker  of  the  material  world,  thou  Holy  One  !  Who  is  the  fourth 
who  rejoices  the  earth  with  greatest  joy  ? 

Ahiu-a  Mazda  answered  :  It  is  he  who  cultivates  most  com,  grass, 
and  fruit.  O  Spitama  Zarathustra  !  who  waters  ground  that  is  dry,  or 
dries  ground  that  is  too  wet.  Unhappy  is  the  land  that  has  long  lain 
unsown  with  the  seed  of  the  sower  and  wants  a  good  husbandman,  like 
a  well-shapen  maiden  who  has  long  gone  childless  and  wants  a  good  hus- 
band. He  who  would  till  the  earth,  O  Spitama  Zarathustra  !  with  the 
left  arm  and  the  right,  with  the  right  arm  and  the  left,  unto  him  will  she 
bring  forth  plenty,  like  a  loving  bride  on  her  bed  unto  her  beloved  :  the 
bride  will  bring  forth  children,  the  earth  will  bring  forth  plenty  of  fruit. 


106  ANCIENT  RELIGION:   PERSIA  [ch. 

He  who  would  till  the  eetrth,  O  Spitama  Zarathustra  !  with  the  left  ann 
and  the  right,  with  the  right  eunn  and  the  left,  unto  him  thus  says  the 
Earth  :  O  thou  man  !  who  dost  till  me  with  the  left  arm  and  the  right, 
with  the  right  arm  and  the  left,  hither  shall  jjeople  ever  come  and  beg 
for  bread,  here  shall  I  ever  go  on  bearing,  bringing  forth  all  manner  of 
food,  bringing  forth  profusion  of  corn.  He  who  does  not  till  the  earth, 
O  Spitama  Zarathustra  !  with  the  left  arm  and  the  right,  with  the  right 
arm  and  the  left,  unto  him  thus  says  the  Earth  :  O  thou  man  !  who  dost 
not  till  me  with  the  left  arm  and  the  right,  with  the  right  arm  and  the 
left,  ever  shalt  thou  stand  at  the  door  of  the  stranger,  among  those  who 
beg  for  bread  ;  ever  shalt  thou  wait  there  for  the  refuse  that  is  brought 
imto  thee,  brought  by  those  that  have  profusion  of  wealth.  Sacred 
Books  0}  the  East,  vol.  iv.  pp.  28,  29. 

The  nobler  spirit  both  of  the  Magi,  and  of  Zoroaster,  is  well 
exemplified  in  that  passage  ;  nor  is  it  the  only  instance  of  that 
spirit  in  the  Vendidad  ;  but  when  the  whole  book  is  considered, 
such  a  passage  is  the  exception,  and  not  the  rule. 

The  Vendidad  was  one  of  twenty-one  books  (or  Nasks,  as 
they  were  called)  in  which  the  laws  and  maxims  of  the  Zoroas- 
trian  rehgion  were  contained  in  the  fourth  century  before  Christ 
(as  well  as  we  can  tell) ;  most  of  them  have  perished,  but  the 
topics  dealt  with  in  them  are  more  or  less  preserved  to  us  in  the 
Dinkard,  one  of  the  principal  Pahlavi  writings  (translated  by 
E.  W.  West :  this  part  of  the  Dinkard  will  be  found  in  vol.  xxxvii. 
of  Sacred  Books  of  the  East). 

I  have  written  in  this  chapter  of  the  Gathas,  of  the  later 
Yasnas  (which  have  something  of  the  features  of  a  liturgy),  and 
of  the  Vendidad  :  the  Yasts  are  the  chief  remaining  part  of 
the  Avesta,  and  I  must  say  something  more  about  them.  That 
the  Yasts,  in  their  present  form,  were  the  composition  of  the 
Magi  (like  all  the  later  Avesta)  is  probable ;  but  they  bear  strong 
traces  of  the  old  Aryan  religion ;  they  evince  to  us,  what  other- 
wise we  should  not  have  known,  the  incessant  struggle  of  that 
religion  to  enter  within  the  borders  of  Magianism,  to  dis- 
possess Magianism  and  claim  the  ground  for  itself.  The  Yasts 
are  most  graceful,  picturesque  productions ;  in  some  ways 
they  remind  one  of  the  Homeric  hymns  ;  but  they  have  less 
narrative,  more  fervour  ;  something  of  the  ethical  glow  of  the 
original  Magianism  accepts  into  its  embraces  the  story-telling  dis- 
position of  the  Aryan  bard.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the 
Yasts  show  us  the  Magian  priesthood  yielding  before  the  allurements 
of  the  great  men  of  Persia,  and  especially  of  the  kings  of  Persia, 
and  preferring  the  ornaments  of  cultivated  life  to  those  senti- 
ments of  religion  with  which  even  the  Magi,  much  more  Zoroaster, 


IV]  ANCIENT  RELIGION:   PERSIA  107 

had  begun.  Let  me  quote,  as  perhaps  the  most  extreme  instance 
of  a  polytheism  which  would  gladly  keep  itself  under  a  veil,  but 
cannot,  part  of  the  description  of  the  famous  goddess  Ardvi  Sura 
Anahita  from  the  fifth  Yast : 

Ardvi  Sura  Anahita,  who  stands  carried  forth  in  the  shape  of  a  maid, 
fair  of  body,  most  strong,  tall-formed,  high-girded,  pure,  nobly  bom  of  a 
glorious  race ....  Upon  her  head  Ardvi  Sura  Anahita  bound  a  golden 
crown,  with  a  hundred  stars,  with  eight  rays ....  She  is  clothed  with  gar- 
ments of  beaver,  Ardvi  Siu-a  Anahita  ;  with  the  skin  of  thirty  beavers  of 
those  that  bear  four  young  ones,  that  are  the  finest  kind  of  beavers.  .  . . 
Here,  O  good  most  beneficent  Ardvi  Sura  Anahita  !  I  beg  of  thee  this 
favour,  that  I,  fiilly  blessed,  may  conquer  large  kingdoms,  rich  in  horses, 
with  high  tributes,  with  snorting  horses,  sounding  chariots,  flashing  swords, 
rich  in  raiments,  etc.     Ibid.  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  82,  83. 

Do  we  not  read  in  the  last  sentence  the  very  inmost  senti- 
ment of  a  Persian  despot — perhaps  of  Artaxerxes  Mnemon  him- 
self ^  ?  But  there  is  rather  an  unusual  absence  of  the  moral 
element  in  the  Yast  from  which  the  above  extract  is  made  ; 
much  more  of  it  would  be  found  in  the  Mihir  Yast  or  the  Far- 
vardin  Yast,  or  some  others.  Yet  on  the  whole,  the  morality 
of  the  Yasts  is  below  their  poetry. 

I  do  not  doubt  that  nearly  the  whole  of  the  Vendidad  and  the 
Yasts  were  written  under  the  Achsemenian  dynasty,  and  in  the 
fifth  and  fourth  centuries  before  Christ ;  something  of  the  Yasts 
may  be  drawn  from  ancient  Aryan  poetry,  and  something  of  the 
Vendidad  may  have  been  added  in  Sassanian  times,  with  a  view 
to  special  heresies  then  prevalent ;  but  on  the  whole  these  two 
books  show  the  decadence  of  Persia  after  the  time  of  the  great 
Darius  ;  they  show  the  absence  of  any  guiding  influence  over 
the  inmost  being  of  men.  The  elements  of  good  that  were  in 
them  had  little  influence,  and  Persia  hastened  to  ruin. 

The  crash  came  when  Alexander  mounted  the  throne  of 
Macedon.  There  was  no  strength  in  the  Persian  empire  to  resist 
that  great  warrior,  when  he  overran,  and  took  possession  of,  that 
empire  ;  Greeks  began  to  occupy  large  Persian  provinces  ;  the 
Zoroastrian  religion  and  the  Magi  sank  into  obscurity.  From  the 
year  331  B.C.,  when  the  victory  of  Arbela  gave  the  whole  of  the 
Persian  empire  into  the  hands  of  Alexander,  the  Zoroastrian 
religion  lay  buried,  seemingly  dead,  for  the  best  part  of  four 
centuries.     Then,  when  the  phalanx  of  Macedon  and  the  legion 

^  We  know  from  Berosus  that  Artaxerxes  Mnemon  was  the  first  who  caused 
an  image  of  Anahita  to  be  made  ;  and  Professor  Moulton  justly  argues  that  the 
description  in  this  Yast  was  taken  from  the  image ;  from  whence  the  date  of  the 
composition  of  the  Yast  may  be  inferred. 


108  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  PERSIA  [o^. 

of  Rome  had  alike  receded  from  those  eastern  territories,  the 
Zoroastrian  religion  began  to  revive  again ;  slowly  under  the 
Parthians  at  first ;  but  from  226  B.C.  onwards,  for  four  centuries, 
under  the  native  Persian  rule  of  the  Sassanians.  In  this  revived 
state  it  was  probably  purer  and  better  than  it  had  been  under 
the  Persian  kings  of  the  fifth  and  fourth  centuries  before  Christ ; 
yet  still  with  too  many  superstitious  and  feeble  elements  clinging 
to  it  for  it  to  be  able  to  renovate  mankind. 

Lastly,  in  the  seventh  century  of  our  era,  there  fell  upon 
Persia  the  hurricane  of  Mohammedan  conquest,  and  the  adher- 
ents of  Zoroastrianism  generally  succumbed  to  the  storm.  The 
small  community  of  scholars  and  merchants  who  have  retained 
their  ancient  faith,  and  in  a  purified  form,  those  named  the 
Parsis,  deserve  our  respect ;  some  great  elements  of  an  ancient 
history,  and  of  pure  feeling,  survive  in  them  ;  and  these  are 
valuable,  though  they  have  not  been  able  to  accomplish  that 
great  work,  the  conversion  of  the  world,  which  is  the  crown  of 
all  reUgion. 

Let  me  in  conclusion  quote  from  one  of  the  Pahlavi  writings 
a  strain  of  feeling  which  is  found  in  briefer  form  in  the  Avesta, 
both  in  the  Vendidad  and  in  the  Yasts — a  recurrent  strain  which 
exhibits  the  Zoroastrian  religion  at  its  best : 

When  a  soul  of  the  righteous  passes  upon  that  bridge  [the  super- 
natural bridge  to  heaven,  which  the  wicked  cannot  cross]  the  width 
of  the  bridge  becomes  as  it  were  a  furlong,  and  the  righteous  soul  passes 
over  with  the  cooperation  of  Sr6sh  the  righteous.  And  his  own  deeds 
of  a  virtuous  kind  come  to  meet  him  in  the  form  of  a  maiden,  who  is 
handsomer  and  better  than  every  maiden  in  the  world. 

And  the  righteous  soul  speaks  thus  :  "  Who  mayest  thou  be,  that 
a  maiden  who  is  handsomer  and  better  than  thee  was  never  seen  by  me 
in  the  worldly  existence  ?  " 

In  reply  that  maiden  form  responds  thus  :  "I  am  no  maiden,  but  I 
am  thy  virtuous  deeds,  thou  youth  who  art  well  thinking,  well  speaking, 
well  doing,  and  of  good  religion  !  For  when  thou  sawest  in  the  world 
him  who  performed  demon-worship,  then  thou  hast  sat  down,  and  thy 
performance  was  the  worship  of  the  sacred  beings.  And  when  it  was  seen 
by  thee  that  there  was  any  one  who  caused  oppression  and  plunder,  and 
distressed  or  scorned  a  good  person,  and  acquired  wealth  by  crime,  then 
thou  keptest  back  from  the  creatures  their  own  risk  of  oppression  and 
plunder  ;  the  good  person  was  also  thought  of  by  thee,  and  lodging  and 
entertainment  provided  ;  and  alms  were  given  by  thee  to  him  who  came 
forth  from  near  and  him,  too,  who  was  from  afar  ;  and  wealth  which  was 
due  to  honesty  was  acquired  by  thee.  And  when  thou  sawest  him  who 
practised  false  justice  and  taking  of  bribes,  and  false  evidence  was  given 
by  him,  then  thou  hast  sat  down,  and  the  recitation  of  truth  and  virtue 
was  uttered  by  thee.     I  am  this  of  thine,  the  good  thoughts,  the  good 


IV]  ANCIENT  RELIGION:   PERSIA  109 

words,  and  the  good  deeds  which  were  thought  and  spoken  and  done  by 
thee.  For  when  I  have  become  commendable,  I  am  then  made  altogether 
more  commendable  by  thee  ;  when  I  have  become  precious  I  am  then 
made  altogether  still  more  precious  by  thee  ;  and  when  I  have  become 
glorious,  I  am  then  made  altogether  still  more  glorious  by  thee." 

And  when  he  walks  onwards  from  there,  a  sweet-scented  breeze  comes 
then  to  meet  him,  which  is  more  fragrant  than  all  perfume.  The  soul  of 
the  righteous  inquires  of  Srosh  thus:  "What  breeze  is  this,  that  never  in 
the  world  so  fragrant  a  breeze  came  into  contact  with  me  ?  " 

Then  Srosh,  the  righteous,  replies  to  that  righteous  soul  thus:  "This 
breeze  is  from  heaven,  which  is  so  fragrant." 

Afterwards,  on  his  march,  the  first  step  is  set  on  the  place  of  good 
thoughts,  the  second  on  that  of  good  words,  the  third  on  that  of  good 
deeds,  and  the  fourth  step  reaches  up  into  the  endless  light  which  is  all- 
radiant.  And  angels  and  archangels  of  every  description  come  to  meet 
him,  and  ask  tidings  from  him  thus  :  "How  hast  thou  come,  from  that 
which  is  a  perishable,  fearful,  and  very  miserable  existence,  to  this  which 
is  an  imperishable  existence,  that  is  undisturbed,  thou  youth  who  art 
well  thinking,  well  speaking,  well  doing,  and  of  good  religion  ?  " 

Then  Auharmazd,  the  Lord,  speaks  thus  :  "  Ask  ye  from  him  no 
tidings  ;  for  he  has  parted  from  that  which  was  a  precious  body,  and  has 
come  by  that  which  is  a  fearful  road.  And  bring  ye  unto  him  the  most 
agreeable  of  eatables,  that  which  is  the  midspring  butter,  so  that  he  may 
rest  his  soul  from  that  bridge  of  the  three  nights,  unto  which  he  came 
from  Astovidad  and  the  remaining  demons  ;  and  seat  him  upon  an  all- 
embellished  throne." 

As  it  is  declared  that  "  Unto  the  righteous  man  and  woman,  after 
passing  away,  they  bring  food  of  the  most  agreeable  of  eatables — the  food 
of  the  angels  of  the  spiritual  existences — that  which  is  the  midspring  butter; 
and  they  seat  him  down  upon  an  all -embellished  throne.  For  ever  and 
everlasting  they  remain  in  all  glory  with  the  angels  of  the  spiritual  exist- 
ences everlastingly."  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xxiv.  pp.  18-22. 
(The  meaning  of  the  name  of  the  work  from  which  this  extract  is  taken 
is  Opinions  of  the  Spirit  of  Wisdom. ) 

Let  us  smile,  if  we  will,  at  the  "  midspring  butter  "  ;  but 
has  a  religion,  however  imperfect,  existed  in  vain,  which  has 
been  able  to  hand  down  to  all  posterity  such  a  picture  of  the 
reward  of  a  virtuous  soul  ? 


APPENDIX   TO   CHAPTER   IV 

ON    THE   IDENTIFICATION    OF    VISTASPA,   THE    ROYAL    CONVERT    OF 
ZOROASTER,    WITH    VISTASPA    THE    FATHER    OF    DARIUS 

This  identification  would  be  impossible  if  Zoroaster  lived, 
as  some  of  the  Greeks  thought,  5000  years  before  the  Trojan 
war.  But  this  curious  Greek  error  has  been  well  explained  by 
Professor  Williams  Jackson  {Zoroaster,  p.  152) ;  the  Greeks  mistook 
what  the  Persians  told  them  of  the  fravashi,  or  spiritual  essence, 


no  ANCIENT   RELIGION:   PERSIA  [ch.  iv 

of  Zoroaster,  for  a  statement  regarding  his  bodily  existence. 
But  it  is  argued,  that  if  Zoroaster  had  Uved  in  the  sixth  century 
B.C.,  the  Greeks  must  have  known  his  period.  This  argument 
would  be  sound,  had  Zoroaster  been  a  Persian ;  but  the  Persians, 
though  accepting  the  Magi  as  their  priests,  cared  little  for  any 
individual  Magian ;  hence  it  was  that  they  did  not  mention 
Zoroaster's  name  to  Herodotus. 

Modern  critics  do  not  realise  what  a  blank  void  was  caused 
in  the  historical  consciousness  of  the  Magi,  by  reason  of  their 
rebellion  against  the  Persians,  and  their  defeat  by  Darius.  This 
is  why  the  A  vesta  never  mentions  Darius  or  his  successors  on 
the  Persian  throne.  A  silence  caused  by  shame  has  been  mis- 
interpreted as  if  all  that  preceded  this  silence  were  ancient 
and   legendary. 

Again,  the  language  of  the  Gathas  has  certain  special  resem- 
blances to  the  language  of  the  Rig-Veda,  a  book  probably  of 
the  second  millennium  B.C. ;  whence  it  is  argued  that  the  Gathas 
date  not  very  far  from  the  second  millennium  B.C.  But  Professor 
Moulton  tells  us  {Early  Religious  Poetry  of  Persia,  p.  4)  that 
these  two  languages  differ  in  their  general  character  as  much 
as  Dutch  and  English ;  a  difference  which  must  have  taken 
many  centuries  to  accompHsh.  The  special  resemblances  may 
be  accounted  for  by  the  Gathas  having  been  written  in  eastern 
Iran,  comparatively  near  India.  I  may  remark  that  when  so 
excellent  a  scholar  as  E.  W.  West  places  the  conversion  of  Vis- 
taspa  at  the  date  618  B.C.  {Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xlvii. 
p.  XXX ),  it  can  hardly,  on  linguistic  grounds,  be  thought  impossible 
for  it  to  have  taken  place  in  570  B.C. 

Lastly,  the  father  of  the  Zoroastrian  Vistaspa  is  called  in 
the  Avesta  Aurvat-aspa  {Aban  Yost,  105) ;  in  the  Pahlavi  writings 
by  the  equivalent  name  Lohrasp  or  Loharasp.  Now  Darius, 
in  the  Behistun  inscription,  after  mentioning  his  own  father 
Vistaspa,  says  that  the  father  of  Vistaspa  was  Arshama. 
Hence  it  is  argued,  that  the  two  Vistaspas,  having  different 
fathers,  must  be  different  men.  But  (not  to  speak  of  other 
explanations)  this  argument  overlooks  the  fact  that  Darius,  in 
tracing  his  own  descent  from  Acha;menid  kings,  would  almost 
certainly  have  omitted  females  who  were  in  the  direct  line ;  see 
a  later  instance  of  this  given  by  West  {Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 
vol.  y.  p.  xix).  Thus  Arshama,  if  ho  were  the  maternal  grand- 
father of  Vishtaspa,  would  be  called  his  father;  and  this  would 
take  away  the  difficulty. 

The  identification  of  the  two  Vistaspas  receives  some  support 
from  Pliny;  still  more  from  the  sober  narrative  in  Dinkard  v.  i. 
2-0  ;  iv.  S,  9,  according  to  which  Loharasp,  the  father  of  the 
Zoroastrian  Vistaspa,  went  as  a  subordinate  of  Nebuchadnezzar 
to  the  siege  of  .lenisalem  (the  siege  in  598  B.C.  must  bo  the  one 
intended). 

I  think,  therefore,  that  the  identification  stands. 


CHAPTER   V 

ANCIENT   RELIGION  :    CHINA  AND   JAPAN 

So  remote,  until  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
were  China  and  Japan  from  the  spiritual  movements  of  Europe 
and  western  Asia,  that  it  may  seem  to  some  people  that  this  part 
of  the  earth  ought  to  be  regarded  as  a  separate  province,  and 
not  to  form  part  of  the  subject  of  a  work  which  necessarily 
centres  in  the  western  nations.  But  the  importance  of  China 
and  Japan,  from  the  moral  and  religious  no  less  than  from  the 
material  point  of  view,  is  undeniable  ;  and  to  omit  them  from 
the  present  work  would  leave  a  sad  lacuna.  I  must  needs  take 
them  in  ;   and  China,  the  more  ancient,  comes  first. 

The  history  of  China  is  eloquent  to  us  on  the  merits,  and 
eloquent  on  the  defects,  of  reverence  when  taken  as  the  single 
supreme  motive  of  man.  It  is  impossible  to  think  of  the  four 
thousand  and  more  years  during  which  the  Chinese  have  been 
a  growing  and  expanding  nation,  always  industrious,  always 
subduing  the  earth  to  human  needs,  never  dispirited  by  calami- 
ties whether  inflicted  by  man  or  by  nature,  and  not  to  feel  that 
a  true  power  lies  in  them,  of  which  it  will  be  profitable  to 
investigate  the  source.  But  we  cannot  help  also  noticing  how 
prone  the  Chinese  have  been  to  cling  to  ancient  evils  ;  how 
strong  the  yoke  of  custom  (until  quite  recent  years)  has  been 
upon  them  ;  and  this  defect  came  from  a  wrongly  directed 
reverence.  For  good  chiefly  but  not  solely,  the  Chinese  type  of 
character  has  been  remarkable  ;  and  we  cannot  but  inquire  how 
this  is  reflected  in  their  religion. 

The  Chinese  character  appears  to  have  received  its  final 
stamp  in  the  sixth  century  before  Christ,  through  the  great  and 
famous  philosopher  Confucius  ;  but  it  cannot  be  doubted  that 
:  its  main  characteristics  had  appeared  long  before  this.  If  we  go 
'  back  to  the  first  origin  of  the  race,  we  have  to  look  to  the  region 
south  of  the  Caspian  sea.  So  says  Terrien  de  Lacouperie  (as 
quoted  in  The  Story  of  the  Nations— China,  page  2),  and  doubtless 


112  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  [ch. 

he  is  right.  Of  this  conclusion  the  character  of  the  Chinese 
writing  is  evidence.  Chinese  writing  is  at  this  day  in  that  stage 
which  belonged  to  all  writing  before  an  alphabet  was  invented  ; 
a  stage  when  something  of  the  hieroglyphical  character  still 
remains ;  when  every  sign  stands  separate  from  every  other 
sign,  and  each  sign  suggests  its  own  meaning,  not  indeed  at  a 
glance,  but  by  a  nearer  similarity  than  is  possible  under  alpha- 
betical systems,  where  the  sound  of  each  letter,  and  not  the 
meaning  of  each  sign,  is  the  guide  to  the  word  intended.  More 
than  30,000  signs  are  employed  in  Chinese  writing  ;  and  how 
remote  this  system  must  be  from  our  own  western  methods  of 
writing  will  be  seen  at  once.  But  when  we  find  that  one  of  the 
languages  of  the  Nineveh  inscriptions  has  no  fewer  than  642 
characters^,  we  perceive  that  in  that  language  also  what  we  call 
an  alphabet  has  hardly  been  attained ;  though  an  alphabet 
must  have  been  on  its  way.  In  Chinese  writing  an  alphabet  is 
not  even  on  its  way  ;  yet  Terrien  de  Lacouperie  was  able  to 
show  "  a  marked  connexion  between  many  of  the  primitive 
written  characters  of  the  languages  of  Akkadia  and  China  " — 
Akkadia  meaning  the  great  Mesopotamian  valley.  We  infer, 
then,  that  in  times  antecedent  to  the  earliest  of  the  Akkadian 
or  Sumerian  languages  as  found  in  the  Nineveh  inscriptions,  the 
Chinese  must  have  been  one  of  the  races  inhabiting  the  country 
between  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  Caspian  Sea,  including  in  this 
the  valleys  of  the  Euphrates  and  the  Tigris. 

Eastwards,  then,  from  this  origin,  went  the  Chinese  ;  but 
it  would  be  vain  to  ask  in  what  millennium  before  Christ  this 
great  migration  took  place.  If  I  understand  rightly  what  others 
have  written  on  the  subject,  it  is  not  merely  the  Chinese  writing, 
but  the  Chinese  spoken  language,  which  has  marks  of  being 
extremely  primitive  ;  and  this  would  imply  a  very  early  migra- 
tion from  the  haunts  of  their  first  habitation,  where  they  were 
associated  with  races  more  given  to  change  than  they  themselves 
were.  As  farther  linking  the  Chinese  with  the  Sumerian  races, 
the  oblique  eyes  of  some  of  the  latter  may  be  mentioned^. 

When  the  Chinese  people  are  first  mentioned  in  their  own 
historical  documents,  we  find  them  in  the  province  of  Shensi, 
along  the  western  bank  of  the  great  river  Hwang-ho,  in  its  upper 
course.  An  ancient  monarch,  named  Fu-hsi,  is  said  to  have 
governed  them  in  those  early  days;    but  he  is  too  shadowy  a 

*  Sayce's  Archceology  of  the  CuTieiform  Inscriptions,  p.  18. 

*  Noted  by  Saycc,  ArchcEologi/  of  the  Cuneiform  Inscriptions,  pw  72. 


V]  CHINA    AND    JAPAN  113 

figure  for  serious  history  to  dwell  long  upon  him.  The  most 
ancient  of  Chinese  books,  the  Sh4  King,  begins  with  a  brief 
account  of  a  ruler  of  the  name  of  Yao,  in  whose  time  a  flood 
took  place,  which  may  probably  have  resulted  from  an  inundation 
of  the  Hwang-ho  river,  such  as  has  repeatedly  happened  in  more 
recent  times.  But  the  "  Canon  of  Yao  "  (by  which  title  this  part 
of  the  Shu  King  is  known)  contains  the  still  more  curious  informa- 
tion that  this  ruler  appointed  astronomers  by  whom  the  four 
quarter-days  of  the  year,  the  solstices  and  the  equinoxes,  were 
to  be  exactly  determined  ;  the  days  being  fixed  by  the  particular 
star  which  then  culminated  in  the  south  while  the  sun  was  setting 
in  the  west.  As  these  stars  are  named  in  the  Shu  King,  modern 
astronomers  have  been  able  to  calculate  from  them  the  date  at 
which  Yao  must  have  reigned,  and  they  determine  it  to  have  been 
approximately  in  the  twenty-fourth  century  before  the  Christian 
era.  This  is  fairly  in  accordance  with  the  traditional  reckoning  of 
Chinese  philosophers  and  historians  (as  will  be  seen  by  referring 
to  the  third  chapter  of  Dr  Legge's  Introduction  to  the  Shu  King, 
in  the  third  volume  of  Sacred  Books  of  the  East) ;  and  hence  we 
may  regard  Yao  as  a  real  historical  personage,  living  at  about 
the  date  thus  assigned  to  him. 

If  Yao  was  a  real  historical  personage,  the  inference  seems 
to  hold  that  the  monarchs  subsequent  to  him  who  are  mentioned 
in  the  Shu  King  were  real  historical  personages  also  ;  and  as  the 
art  of  writing  is  distinctly  mentioned  as  in  use  at  a  date  not  far 
from  1700  B.C.,  and  is  probably  impHed  in  regard  to  a  consider- 
ably earlier  epoch,  there  is  no  reason  for  doubting  that  the  names 
of  the  monarchs  and  some  of  the  principal  events  of  their  reigns 
were  actually  recorded.  In  later  times  we  have  mention  of  court 
annalists  or  recorders^  ;  but  we  have  no  certain  knowledge  when 
these  officials  began  to  exist ;  it  was  at  any  rate  long  before  the 
time  of  Confucius  (in  the  sixth  century  B.C.).  But  in  reference 
to  the  trustworthiness  of  the  Shu  King,  the  opinion  of  the  Chinese 
philosopher  Mencius  is  important  (he  lived  in  the  fourth  century 
B.C.) ;    here  is  what  Dr  Legge  says  about  this^: 

One  passage  in  Mencius  seems  to  put  it  beyond  a  doubt  that  the  Shu 
existed  as  such  a  collection  in  his  time.  Having  said  that  "  it  would  be 
better  to  be  without  the  Shu  than  to  give  entire  credit  to  it,"  he  makes 
immediate  reference  to  one  of  the  books  of  oiir  classic  by  name,  and  adds, 
"  In  the  Completion  of  the  War  I  select  two  or  three  passages  only,  and 
believe  them." 

^  See  pages  4  and  5  of  Dr  Legge's  Introduction  to  the  Shu  King  just  mentioned , 
2  In  the  same  Introduction,  page  2. 


114  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

It  will  be  seen  that  Mencius  was  a  discriminating  critic ;  at 
the  same  time  his  criticism  is  directed  towards  the  question  of 
the  credibility  of  the  narrative,  not  to  the  question  of  the  date 
of  its  composition.  It  is  not  diflBcult  to  beheve  that  the  main 
facts  over  a  great  part  of  the  Shil  King  were  noted  down  at  the 
time  that  they  happened,  especially  as  the  existence  of  court 
annahsts  in  eariy  times  is  probable ;  but  what  is  difficult  to 
believe  is  that  the  Shu  King  was  written  down  at  first  in  the 
form  in  which  we  read  it  now.  It  is  indeed  quite  surprisingly 
free  from  strange  and  improbable  occurrences  ;  but  that  in  a 
society  emerging  out  of  barbarism  into  civilisation,  with  so  much 
of  wildness  and  disorder  remaining  to  the  last,  there  should  have 
been  for  many  centuries  such  perfect  uniformity  of  moral 
tone  as  that  which  we  find  in  the  Shu  King  seems  impossible. 
The  moralising  is  incessant ;  it  is  never  sharpened  into 
indignation,  and  never  remitted  for  the  sake  of  picturesque 
narrative  or  any  idiosyncratic  tendency  of  the  historian ;  nor  is 
it  ever  interrupted  by  lively  discussion.  It  is  an  even  monotonous 
flow  ;  and  for  a  sample,  take  the  following  passage.  Here  is 
part  of  the  speech  of  Thang  to  his  nobles,  when  he  assumed  rule 
after  defeating  and  destroying  the  dynasty  of  Hsia  (about  1766  B.C. 
is  the  assigned  date) : 

It  is  given  to  me,  the  One  man,  to  secure  the  harmony  and  tran- 
quillity of  your  states  and  clans  ;  and  now  I  know  not  whether  I  may  not 
offend  against  the  Powers  above  and  below.  I  am  fearful  and  trembling, 
as  if  I  were  in  danger  of  falling  into  a  deep  abyss.  Throughout  all  the 
regions  that  enter  on  a  new  life  under  me,  do  not,  ye  princes,  follow  law- 
less ways  ;  make  no  approach  to  insolence  and  dissoluteness  ;  let  every 
one  be  careful  to  keep  his  statutes  ;  that  so  we  may  receive  the  favour 
of  Heaven.  The  good  in  you  I  will  not  dare  to  keep  concealed  ;  and 
for  the  evil  in  me  I  will  not  dare  to  forgive  myself.  I  will  examine  these 
things  in  harmony  with  the  mind  of  God.  When  guilt  is  found  anywhere 
in  you  who  occupy  the  myriad  regions,  let  it  rest  on  me,  the  One  man. 
When  guilt  is  found  in  me,  the  One  man,  it  shall  not  attach  to  you  who 
occu{)y  the  myriad  regions.  Oh  !  let  us  attain  to  be  sincere  in  these 
things,  and  so  we  shall  Ukewise  have  a  happy  consummation.  Sacred 
Books  of  the  East,  vol.  iii.  pp.  90-1. 

We  run  little  risk  in  saying  that  the  victorious  soldier  Thang 
was  not  himself  the  author  of  that  edifying  harangue.  But  when 
we  find  the  same  sort  of  moral  reflectiveness  overspreading  the 
whole  of  the  Shu  King,  it  is  plain  that  the  speeches  in  it  can  lay 
claim  to  no  sort  of  genuineness  ;  though  they  may  give  us  an 
idea  of  what  Confucius  and  his  disciples  thought.     The  speeches 


V]  CHINA    AND    JAPAN  115 

in  the  Shu  Kang  are  hardly  likely  to  be  older  than  the  era  of 
Confucius  ;  but  the  kind  of  religion  which  the  above  passage 
implies  is  likely  to  be  older  than  Confucius,  and  it  will  be  weU 
to  say  something  about  it. 

"  Heaven  "  and  "  God  "  ;  or  to  use  the  Chinese  words, 
"  Tien  "  and  "  Shang  Ti  "  ;  these  are  the  two  words  in  which 
the  Chinese  express  the  ultimate  ruling  divinity  of  the  universe. 
In  "  Tien"  the  personal  element  is  sunk;  in  "Shang  Ti  "  it  is 
prominent ;  Shang  Ti  is  the  Creator,  the  Sovereign  of  all.  But 
Shang  Ti  is  not  thought  of  as  ruling  singly  or  without  ministers 
of  the  divine  purposes  ;  these  ministers  exist  all  around  us  ; 
among  them  are  reckoned  the  spirits  of  sun,  moon,  and  stars, 

j  the  spirits  of  mountains  and  hills,  the  spirits  of  seas  and  rivers  ; 

vand  nearer  stiU  to  human  affections,  the  spirits  of  departed 
ancestors.     A  belief  of  this  kind,  though  it  may  be  called  poly- 

j  theistic,  still  assigns  a  unity  to  the  Supreme  Being  ;  it  has  a 
certain  dignity,  and  even  a  certain  imaginative  truth,  although 
truth  hard  for  us  to  define  and  reahse.  But  the  weakness  of 
the  belief,  as  the  Chinese  held  it,  was  that  they  introduced  into 
it  the  principle  of  gradation  of  ranks,  making  the  heavenly  order 
of  things  appear  to  be  fashioned  on  the  model  of  a  highly  arti- 
ficial human  society.  It  was  thought  a  lack  of  decent  humility 
if  an  ordinary  human  being  approached  the  Most  High  in  sacrifice 
or  prayer.  The  monarch  might  do  so  ;  and  in  doing  so,  the 
monarch  would  sacrifice  and  pray  not  only  on  his  own  behalf 
but  on  behalf  of  his  people,  on  solemn  stated  occasions  ;  but  an 
ordinary  man  would  pray  to  his  departed  ancestors.  There  is  a 
certain  connexion  between  the  want,  in  the  Chinese,  of  that 
supreme  daring  which  alone  can  break  through  ingrained  errors 
of  the  past,  and  this  formalism  brought  into  the  midst  of  their 
highest  spiritual  theories.  The  message  of  the  Hebrew  prophet, 
into  whose  ears  the  Almighty  has  spoken  "  I  dwell  in  the  high 
and  holy  place,  with  him  also  that  is  of  a  contrite  and  humble 
spirit,  to  revive  the  spirit  of  the  humble,  and  to  revive  the  heart 
of  the  contrite  ones,"  was  debarred  to  the  Chinese  ;  and  how 
much  exaltation  and  comfort  of  heart  did  they  not  lose  in  this 
way  ! 

But  to  return  to  the  Shu  King.  Stripping  off  its  moralising 
mantle,  what  do  we  find  beneath  ?  We  find  in  it  the  history 
of  a  race  more  than  commonly  intelligent,  more  than  commonly 
persevering  ;  not  one  of  the  most  warHke  races,  though  not 
incapable  of  fighting  ;    not  free  from  cruelty,  especially  in  the 

8—2 


116  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  [ch. 

way  of  legal  punishments,  but  desirous  that  that  cruelty  should 
not  be  made  worse  by  injustice  ;  a  race  that  continually  pushed 
back,  in  cases  where  it  could  not  civilise,  the  barbarous  races 
which  surrounded  it.  Beginning  as  an  inland  race,  it  reached 
the  seacoast  at  last.  In  three  ways  did  the  Chinese  race  employ 
its  strength  ;  first,  in  observation  and  material  construction  ; 
secondly,  in  the  determination  of  ethics  and  religion  ;  thirdly, 
not  in  so  laudable  a  manner,  in  the  arts  of  divination.  Super- 
stitious we  must  account  these  ;  and  yet  these  superstitious 
practices  did  not  in  the  early  times  greatly  corrupt  the  Chinese 
religion  ;  they  stood  separate  from  it.  And  so  it  is,  I  believe, 
even  at  the  present  day,  in  China,  in  so  far  as  Confucianism  has 
sway  ;  the  other  two  recognised  religions  of  the  country,  Taoism 
and  Buddhism,  have  adhered  less  to  their  primary  motive,  and 
have  been  more  seriously  corrupted. 

What  are  we  to  think  about  the  details  of  the  history  in  the 
Shu  King  ?  It  is  a  fragmentary  history  ;  considerable  portions 
have  been  lost.  Even  in  what  has  reached  us  there  is  often  a 
certain  meagreness.  But  there  are  interesting  passages.  Take, 
for  instance,  what  we  are  told  about  that  very  early  hero,  Yii, 
whose  date  is  placed  at  2205  B.C.  His  first  service  was  to  repair 
the  damages  of  a  great  flood,  afterwards  he  became  a  monarch  ; 
and  the  first  of  the  Hsia  line  of  kings.  (I  regard  the  rise  and  fall 
of  the  several  dynasties  of  Hsia,  Shang,  and  Chau  as  historical, 
but  their  details  are  hardly  pertinent  to  my  present  purpose.) 
What  I  am  here  concerned  to  recount  is  the  gradual  formation 
of  the  Chinese  civilising  energy  in  all  its  parts  ;  and  the  amount 
and  character  of  the  tribute  paid  to  Yii,  the  monarch  whom  I 
have  already  named,  will  give  us  some  idea  of  the  progress  of 
the  Chinese  in  very  early  times.  Here  is  the  list  of  what  was 
sent  him  from  the  province  of  Ching  Chau. 

Feathers,  hair,  elephants'  teeth,  and  hides  ;  gold,  silver,  and  cop- 
per  ;  Khun  trees,  wood  for  bows,  cedars,  and  cypresses;  grindstones, 
whetstones,  flint  stones  to  make  arrowheads,  and  cinnabar ;  and  the 
Khun  and  lu  bamboos,  with  the  lu  tree  (all  good  for  making  arrows).  .  .  . 
The  three-ribbed  rush  was  sent  in  bundles,  put  into  cases.  The  baskets 
were  filled  with  silken  fabrics,  azure  and  deep  purple,  and  with  strings 
of  pearls  that  were  not  quite  round.  From  the  country  of  the  nine 
Kiang  the  great  tortoi.se  was  presented  when  specially  required.  Sacred 
Books  of  the  East,  vol.  iii.  p.  69. 

The  use  of  flintstones  for  arrowheads  is  an  evidence  of  real 
antiquity  ;  it  would  seem  that  iron  was  rare,  though  the  wild 
province  of  Liang  Chau  did  supply  it,  as  we  learn  in  another  part 


V]  CHINA   AND   JAPAN  117 

of  this  document.  Agriculture  was  not  neglected,  and  the 
diflferent  kinds  of  soils  were  known  and  classified ;  "  woven 
ornamental  fabrics  "  and  "  fine  cloth  "  were  part  of  the  tribute 
from  some  of  the  other  provinces,  and  the  art  of  producing  silk 
was  already  known.  The  following  sentence,  from  the  account 
of  the  tribute  paid  to  Yii,  is  interesting  for  several  reasons  : 

The  wild  people  of  Lai  were  taught  tillage  and  pasturage,  and  brought 
in  their  baskets  the  silk  from  the  mountain  mulberry  tree.  Ihid.  vol.  iii. 
p.  66. 

We  see  from  this  that  the  primitive  Chinese  instructed  their 
less  civihsed  neighbours  in  peaceful  arts  ;  a  more  excellent  plan 
than  making  war  upon  them  and  rooting  them  out.  Also  the 
expression  "  they  brought  in  their  baskets  the  silk  from  the 
mountain  mulberry  tree  "  appears  to  show  that  the  wild  silk- 
worms (as  I  believe  is  known  or  conjectured  from  other  sources) 
left  their  cocoons,  and  probably  long  trails  of  the  silken  thread, 
on  the  mulberry  trees  whose  leaves  had  served  them  for  food  ; 
so  that  Virgil's  expression, 

Velleraque  ut  foliis  depectant  tenuia  Seres, 
is  not  so  incorrect  as  it  has  sometimes  been  thought  to  be.  It 
does  not  appear  from  the  document  here  quoted  whether  the 
Chinese  at  the  date  of  king  Yii  cultivated  the  silkworm  or  not,  but 
from  the  amount  of  silk  evidently  used  it  is  probable  that  they 
had  begun  to  do  so,  and  were  not  entirely  dependent  on  what 
could  be  procured  by  more  natural  and  inartificial  means.  This 
same  chapter  on  the  tribute  paid  to  Yii  also  gives  evidence  of  the 
care  taken  in  keeping  rivers  within  their  proper  channels,  and 
in  draining  marshes  ;  also  in  obtaining  the  produce  of  the  sea, 
and  in  other  details  which  it  is  not  necessary  to  enumerate  fully. 

We  see  then  that  the  Chinese,  in  the  most  primitive  times 
known  to  us,  were  in  the  right  way  towards  civilisation  ;  in  the 
right  way  as  regards  enterprise,  in  the  right  way  also  as  regards 
an  orderly  and  friendly  disposition.  Doubts  which  may  be  felt 
as  to  the  date  of  Yii,  or  even  as  to  his  real  existence,  cannot 
greatly  alter  the  evidence  on  these  points  ;  and  the  care  bestowed 
on  geography,  the  care  also  to  hand  down  these  facts  to  posterity, 
show  that  the  nation  at  large  had  a  right-minded  and  progressive 
temperament.  A  perusal  of  the  collection  of  lyrics  called  the 
Shih  King  will  strengthen  this  impression.  The  oldest  of  these 
Ijnrics  would  appear  to  have  been  written  some  time  before 
1721  B.C.,  in  honour  of  some  of  the  ancestors  of  the  dynasty 
of  Shang,     But  very  few  of  the  other  poems  in  the  collection -at 


118  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

all  approximate  to  this  date ;  most  were  evidently  written  under 
the  Chau  dynasty,  which  reigned  from  1122  B.C.  to  266  B.C. 
All  of  these  pieces  are  pure  and  right-minded  ;  many  are  poetical 
and  pleasing.  Let  me  quote  a  few  brief  extracts.  Here  is  an 
ode  written  in  time  of  prosperity  : 

There  is  peace  throughout  our  myriad  regions.  There  has  been 
a  succession  of  plentiful  years  ;  Heaven  does  not  weary  in  its  favour. 
The  martial  king  WO  maintained  the  confidence  of  his  oflficers,  and  em- 
ployed them  all  over  the  kingdom,  so  securing  the  establishment  of  his 
family.  Oh  !  glorious  was  he  in  the  sight  of  Heaven,  which  kinged  him 
in  the  room  of  Shang.     Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  iii.  p.  335. 

Here  again  is  a  brief  festal  ode  ;  and  the  picturesque  clement 
in  it  enhances  the  feeling  : 

On  the  trees  go  the  blows  kang-kang ;  and  the  birds  cry  out  ying- 
ying.  One  issues  from  the  dark  valley,  and  removes  to  the  lofty  tree. 
Ying  goes  its  cry,  seeking  with  its  voice  its  companion.  Look  at  the 
bird,  bird  as  it  is,  seeking  with  its  voice  its  companion  ;  and  shall  a  man 
not  seek  to  have  his  friends  ?  Spiritual  beings  will  then  hearken  to  him  ; 
he  shall  have  harmony  and  peace.     Ibid.  vol.  iii.  p.  347. 

Here  is  an  ode  written  in  a  time  of  disorder  and  general  afflic- 
tion ;   the  poet  thinks  of  the  times  that  are  past  : 

Small  is  the  cooing  dove,  but  it  fiies  aloft  to  heaven.  My  heart  is 
wounded  with  sorrow,  and  I  think  of  our  forefathers.  When  the  dawn 
is  breaking,  and  I  caiuiot  sleep,  the  thoughts  in  my  breast  are  of  our 
parents. 

Men  who  are  grave  and  wise,  though  they  drink,  are  mild  and  masters 
of  themselves  ;  but  those  who  are  benighted  and  ignorant  become  de- 
voted to  drink,  and  more  so  daily.  Be  careful,  each  of  you,  of  your  de- 
portment ;    what  Heaven  confers,  when  once  lost,  is  not  regained. 

The  greenbeaks  come  and  go,  picking  up  grain  about  the  stackyard. 
Alas  for  the  distressed  and  solitary,  deemed  fit  inmates  for  the  prisons  ! 
With  a  handful  of  grain  I  go  out  and  divine,  how  I  may  be  able  to  become 
good.     Ibid.  vol.  iii.  p.  359. 

Proverbs  may  amuse,  without  being  convincing.    Here  are  two  : 

A  flaw  in  a  mace  of  white  jade  may  be  ground  away  ;  but  for  a  flaw 
in  8j)eech  notliing  can  be  done. 

To  look  for  horns  on  a  young  ram  will  only  weary  you,  my  son. 
Ibid.  vol.  111.  pp.  415,  416. 

Here  is  another  lament  on  the  sorrowful  state  of  the  people  : 

Luxuriant  is  that  young  mulberry  tree,  and  beneath  it  wade  is  the 
sheuie  ;  but  they  will  phick  its  loaves  till  it  is  quite  destroyed.  The 
distreti-s  inflicted  on  these  multitudes  of  the  people  is  an  uncetusing  .sorrow 
to  my  heart  ;  my  commiseration  fills  my  breast.  O  thou  bright  and 
great  Heaven,  shouldest  thou  not  have  compassion  on  us  ?  Ibid.  vol.  lu. 
p.  417. 


V]  CHINA   AND    JAPAN  119 

Here,  finally,  is  a  part  of  a  love-story ;  the  maiden  is  the 
narrator :  . 

A  simple -looking  lad  you  were,  carrying  cloth  to  exchange  it  for 
silk.  But  you  came  not  so  to  purchase  silk  ;  you  came  to  make  proposals 
to  me.  I  convoyed  you  through  the  river  Khi,  as  far  as  the  height  of 
Tun.  "It  is  not  I,"  I  said,  "  who  would  protract  the  time  ;  but  you  have 
had  no  good  go-between.  I  pray  you  be  not  angry,  and  let  autvunn  be 
the  time." 

I  ascended  that  ruinous  wall,  to  look  towards  Fu-kwan  ;  and  when 
I  saw  you  not  coming  from  it,  my  tears  flowed  in  streams.  When  I  did 
see  you  coming  from  Fu-kwan,  I  laughed  and  I  spoke.  You  had  consulted 
(you  said)  the  tortoise-shell  and  the  divining  stalks,  and  there  was  nothing 
iinfavourable  in  their  response.  "Then  come,"  I  said,  "with  your  carriage 
and  I  will  remove  with  my  goods  \ "     Ibid.  vol.  iii.  p.  437-8. 

The  maiden,  we  must  regret  to  learn,  was  cast  off  in  the  end. 
But  the  reader  will  observe  mention  in  this  passage  of  two  of 
the  main  processes  of  divination,  used  for  both  public  and  private 
purposes  ;  the  marks  on  the  shell  of  the  tortoise,  and  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  stalks  of  the  Khi  plant  ("  probably  the  Achillea 
millefolium,"  says  Dr  Legge).  Superstition  there  certainly  is  in 
such  practices,  but  not  a  dark  or  very  blamable  superstition. 

The  reader  will,  I  think,  allow  that  there  was  a  tender  and 
natural  flow  of  feeling  in  the  people  who  could  do  and  write  the 
things  which  I  have  transcribed  from  the  ancient  books  of  China  ; 
that  there  was  energy  in  them  moreover,  and  a  feeling  of  duty  ; 
and  if  he  thinks  that  their  imagination  went  beyond  the  mark 
in  assigning  to  every  mountain  and  river  its  individual  spirit,  and 
also  in  the  worship  of  their  departed  ancestors,  we  cannot  afford 
wholly  to  despise  such  imaginations  ;  where  they  felt  sacredness, 
there  was  some  sacredness,  though  not  the  precise  foundation  of 
worship  which  they  imagined  to  be  there.  Who  can  but  be  moved, 
even  if  he  must  a  little  smile,  when  the  duke  of  Chau  prays  for 
the  life  of  his  sick  brother  the  king,  asking  his  ancestors  to  take 
himself  away  from  this  world  in  place  of  his  brother,  on  the 
ground  that  he  had  spiritual  abilities  which  his  brother  lacked, 
and  was  better  fitted  to  serve  his  ancestors  in  the  world  of  spirits? 
Nor  must  we  forget  that  over  the  world  of  unseen  spirits  these 
ancient  Chinese  held  that  a  Supreme  Spirit  rules  ;  there  was  a 
largeness  in  their  conceptions,  even  when  their  actual  practice 
went  wrong. 

Other  points  in  these  primitive  ages  (and  I  speak  of  times 
earlier  than  the  sixth  century  before  Christ)  are  worthy  of  notice, 
though  I  must  mention  them  but  briefly.     We  read  of  standard 


120  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [oh. 

measures  of  length,  capacity,  and  (probably)  of  weight ;  of 
astronomical  observations,  which  had  no  doubt  some  relation  to 
astrology,  though  not  without  other  applications,  as  for  instance 
indicating  the  seasons  of  the  year ;  of  musical  instruments, 
especially  the  "  sounding-stone  "  ;  of  the  building  of  temples 
and  altars,  and  of  sacrifices,  including  sacrifices  of  animals.  We 
read  prohibitions  of  drunkenness  ;  and  we  read,  finally,  of  a 
third  system  of  divination  (besides  the  divination  from  the  tor- 
toise shell  and  that  from  the  Khi  plant)  which  has  curious  mathe- 
matical affinities ;  a  system  expounded  in  a  treatise,  highly 
esteemed  by  Confucius,  called  the  Yi  King.  We  ourselves  may 
glance  at  its  pages  with  amusement,  and  from  its  Appendices 
we  may  even  draw  instruction ;  moreover  the  way  in  which  the 
Yi  King  makes  linear  measurements  emblematic  of  moraUty 
and  prudence  will  remind  us  of  the  way  in  which  the  Greek 
philosopher  Pythagoras  regarded  number  as  the  primary  essence 
of  all  things,  moral  as  well  as  material.  The  hexagrams  of  the 
Yi  King  were,  it  is  said,  elaborated  by  one  of  the  heroes 
of  old  time  (who  afterwards,  under  the  name  and  title  of  king 
Wan  became  the  founder  of  a  dynasty),  when  imprisoned  by  the 
tyrannical  monarch  whom  he  afterwards  dethroned  ;  but  the  first 
suggestion  of  the  hexagrams  appears  to  have  been  still  more 
ancient. 

And  now  I  come  to  the  era  of  the  great  philosophers  ;  of 
L&o-tsze,  bom  604  B.C.  ;  and  of  Confucius,  bom  551  B.C.  The 
third  greatest  name  in  Chinese  literature  is  that  of  Mencius,  who 
lived  in  the  fourth  century  before  Christ,  and  was  a  follower  of 
Confucius.  It  will  of  course  be  understood  that  Confucius  and 
Mencius  are  Latinised  names,  of  which  the  Chinese  equivalents 
are  Kung-foo-tsze  and  Mang  respectively. 

The  name  of  Lao-tsze  was  never  Latinised  ;  from  which  it 
is  clear  that  Lao-tsze  was  a  philosopher  of  less  wide  fame  than 
the  other  two.  Yet  as  a  philosopher,  Lao-tsze  is  certainly  the 
greatest  whom  China  has  produced.  Had  he  possessed  mission- 
ary energy  equal  to  his  intellectual  perspicacity,  his  would  have 
been  far  the  greatest  of  Chinese  names  ;  but  from  his  writings 
we  should  gather  that  he  disapproved  of  missionary  energy  ;  he 
thought  it  too  turbulent.  Such  entire  disapproval  was  a  mistake, 
and  this  really  was  his  own  mistake  ;  but  for  the  superstitions 
which  became  attached  afterwards  to  the  name  of  Taoism  he  is 
no  more  responsible  than  he  is  for  the  invention  of  Grimm's 
Fairy  Tales.     Often  as  the  thoughts  of  great  souls  have  been 


V]  CHINA    AND    JAPAN  121 

distorted  by  unworthy  followers,  it  is  seldom  that  the  depravation 
has  been  carried  so  far  as  in  this  case.  It  is  of  the  system  of  the 
Tao,  as  taught  genuinely  by  himself,  that  I  must  now  speak  ;  or 
in  other  words  I  must  give  some  aocount  of  Lao-tsze's  sole  sur- 
viving work,  the  Tdo  Teh  King,  as  that  is  exhibited  in  the  lucid 
translation  of  Dr  Legge,  in  the  39th  volume  of  the  Sacred  Books 
of  the  East. 

That  Lao-tsze  was  not  a  faultless  philosopher,  it  is  perhaps 
hardly  necessary  to  say ;  but  his  strength  is  that  which  we  have 
to  understand  first. 

The  greatest  theme  which  he  propounds  is  the  value  of  spon- 
taneity, of  that  origination  which  flows  silently  from  the  heart  of 
a  man.  Heaven  and  earth,  he  says,  came  into  existence  by  a 
method  which  was  impalpable,  indiscernible.  You  would  say, 
"  There  is  nothing  at  work  "  ;  yet  out  of  this  non- working, 
everything  that  we  see  is  produced.  This  secret,  silent  method 
he  caUs  the  Tao.  "  The  Tao  does  nothing,  and  therefore  there 
is  nothing  which  it  does  not  do  "  ;  such  is  the  brief  paradox  in 
which  he  sums  up  the  whole  of  his  system.  Or,  to  quote  a  verse 
in  which  this  idea  is  rather  expanded,  he  says  : 

The  movement  of  the  Tao 

By  contraries  proceeds  ; 
And  weakness  marks  the  course 

Of  Tao's  mighty  deeds. 

Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xxxix.  p.  83. 

It  wiU  be  seen  that,  according  to  this  verse,  although  the 
working  of  the  Tao  is  in  a  true  sense  weak,  yet  strength  is  brought 
out  of  it ;  and  it  may  be  asked  whether  Lao-tsze  assigns  any 
function  to  strength,  as  well  as  to  weakness,  in  the  work  of  crea- 
tion. Yes,  he  does  ;  it  is  not  weakness  alone,  but  weakness 
inseparably  combined  with  strength,  to  which  he  attributes 
practical  efficiency ;  and  the  whole,  strength  and  weakness, 
must  be  hidden  from  the  eyes  of  men,  to  accomplish  the  greatest 
works.  In  the  physical  universe,  water,  with  its  readiness  to 
yield  at  a  touch,  and  yet  its  intense  penetrative  power,  is  his 
type  of  the  Tao,  of  the  creative  method;  of  the  divine  method, 
we  may  truly  say  ;  but  Lao-tsze  says,  "  It  might  appear  to  have 
been  before  God."  That  is  a  sentiment  with  which  we  shall  not 
agree,  though  we  must  not  call  it  atheistic.  We  should  rather 
say,  "It  is  eternally  inherent  in  God." 

It  is  not,  however,  the  physical  universe  which  has  the 
primary  attraction  for  Lao-tsze,  though  he  assumes  indeed  that  the 


122  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

physical  universe  has  the  T&o  for  its  root ;  but  it  is  in  our  own 
selves  that  he  first  marks  the  Tao's  existence.  Take  for  instance 
the  following  lines  : 

Who  knows  his  manhood's  strength, 
Yet  still  his  female  feebleness  maintains  ; 
As  to  one  channel  flow  the  many  drains. 
All  come  to  him,  yea,  all  beneath  the  sky. 
Thus  he  the  constant  excellence  retains  ; — 
The  simple  child  again,  free  from  all  stains. 

Who  knows  how  white  attracts. 
Yet  always  keeps  himself  within  black's  sheuie. 
The  pattern  of  humility  displayed, 
Displayed  in  view  of  all  beneath  the  sky  ; 
He  in  the  unchanging  excellence  arrayed, 
Endless  return  to  man's  first  state  has  made. 

Who  knows  how  glory  shines, 

Yet  loves  disgrace,  nor  e'er  for  it  grows  pale  ; 

Behold  his  presence  in  a  spacious  vale. 

To  which  men  come  from  all  beneath  the  sky. 

The  unchanging  excellence  completes  its  tale  ; 

The  simple  infant  man  in  liim  we  hail. 

Sacred  Books  of  ike  East,  vol.  xxxix.  p.  71. 

^  Lao-tsze  lays  great  stress  on  the  virtue  of  timeliness,  as  being 
that  which  renders  the  employment  of  violence  unnecessary. 
"  Action,"  he  writes,  "  should  be  taken  before  a  thing  has  made 
its  appearance  ;  order  should  be  secured  before  disorder  has 
begun."     Ibid.  vol.  xxxix.  p.  107. 

He  deprecates  violent  warlike  action  without  saying  that  it  is 
always  avoidable  ;  "  He  who  has  killed  multitudes  of  men,"  he 
writes,  "  should  weep  for  them  with  the  bitterest  grief."  Ibid. 
vol.  XXXIX,  p.  74. 

Here  are  passages  in  which  the  ultimate  divine  agency  is 
referred  to  : 

It  is  the  way  of  Heaven  not  to  strive,  and  yet  it  skilfully  overcomes  ; 
not  to  speak,  and  yet  it  is  skilful  in  (obtaining)  a  reply  ;  does  not  call, 
and  yet  men  come  to  it  of  themselves.  Its  demonstrations  are  quiet, 
and  yet  its  plans  are  skilful  and  effective.  The  meshes  of  the  net  of 
Heaven  are  large  ;  far  apart,  but  letting  nothing  escape.  Ibid.  vol.  xxxix. 
p.  116. 

There  is  always  One  who  presides  over  the  infliction  of  death.  He 
who  would  inflict  death  in  the  room  of  him  who  so  presides  over  it  may 
be  described  as  hewing  wood  instead  of  a  great  carpenter.  Seldom  is  it 
that  he  who  undertakes  the  hewing,  instead  of  the  great  carpenter,  does 
not  cut  his  own  hands  !     Ibid.  vol.  xxxix.  p.  117. 

Here  is  a  passage  in  which  he  describes,  more  clearly  perhaps 


V]  CHINA   AND    JAPAN  123 

than  in  any  other,  the  type  of  moral  excellence  which  he  is 
inculcating  : 

I  have  three  precious  things  which  I  prize  and  hold  fast.  The  first 
is  gentleness  ;  the  second  is  economy ;  and  the  third  is  shrinking  from 
taking  precedence  of  others.  With  that  gentleness  I  can  be  bold  ;  with 
that  economy  I  can  be  liberal  ;  shrinking  from  taking  precedence  of  others 
I  can  become  a  vessel  of  the  highest  honour.  Nowadays  they  give  up 
gentleness  and  are  for  being  bold  ;  economy,  and  are  all  for  being  liberal  ; 
the  hindmost  place,  and  seek  only  to  be  foremost ;  of  all  which  the  end 
is  death.     Ibid.  vol.  xxxix.  p.  110. 

Lastly,  let  me  quote  the  following  passage,  which  in  the  light 
of  Christian  history  we  may  call  truly  prophetic  : 

Every  one  in  the  world  knows  that  the  soft  overcomes  the  hard, 
and  the  weak  the  strong,  but  no  one  is  able  to  carry  it  out  in  practice. 
Therefore  a  sage  has  said. 

He  who  accepts  his  state's  reproach. 
Is  hailed  therefore  its  altars'  lord  ; 
To  him  who  bears  men's  direful  woes 
They  all  the  name  of  king  accord. 
Words  that  are  strictly  true  seem  to  be  paradoxical.     Ibid.  vol.  xxxix. 
p.  120. 

Is  not  this  on  the  very  highest  pinnacle  of  morality  ?  I  can- 
not but  think  that  my  reader  will  be  surprised  to  see  such 
direct  inculcation  of  the  doctrines  of  humility  and  self-denying 
acceptance  of  pain,  with  the  full  knowledge  that  this  is  the  true 
creative  principle,  put  forward  in  China  in  the  sixth  century  «X 
before  Christ.  "  To  recompense  injury  with  kindness  "  is  also 
a  maxim  which  we  find  in  the  Tao  Teh  King  (in  the  39th  volume  w 
of  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  p.  106) ;  and  this  was  a  maxim  to 
which  Confucius  himself  was  unable  to  attain ;  he  somewhat  de- 
murred to  it,  though  by  no  means  as  encouraging  vindictiveness. 

It  will  be  right  to  counterbalance  the  sayings  which  I  have 
quoted  above  by  one  that  will  show  the  weaker  side  of  Lao-tsze. 
In  the  following  passage,  the  second  sentence  is  not  wrong  ;  but 
the  first  and  third  sentences  cannot  be  defended.  It  is,  as  will 
be  seen,  a  passage  in  praise  of  a  simple  life  : 

I  would  make  the  people  (in  a  little  state)  return  to  the  use  of 
knotted  cords  (instead  of  the  written  characters).  They  should  think 
their  (coarse)  food  sweet,  their  (plain)  clothes  beautiful  ;  their  (poor) 
dwellings  places  of  rest  ;  and  their  common  (simple)  ways  sources  of 
enjoyment.  There  should  be  a  neighbouring  state  within  sight,  and  the 
voices  of  the  fowls  and  dogs  should  be  heard  all  the  way  from  it  to  us  ; 
but  I  would  make  the  people  to  old  age,  even  to  death,  not  have  any 
intercom-se  with  it.     Ibid.  vol.  xxxix.  p.  122. 

This  is  making  of  no  account  the  natural  human  feeling  of 


124  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

curiosity,  the  joy  in  the  acquisition  of  something  new ;  it  is 
making  simplicity  a  bar  to  progress,  which  certainly  it  ought 
not  to  be.  But  we  must  not  be  surprised  that  Lao-tsze  in  a  few 
passages  drew  incorrect  inferences  from  a  correct  principle.  His 
primary  conception  has  been  thought  obscure  ;  but  when  once  it 
is  understood  that  by  the  Tao  a  Method  is  intended,  a  Method 
penetrative,  universal,  reaching  into  every  avenue  of  reality  and 
influencing  all  things,  I  do  not  think  that  any  great  difficulty 
lies  in  his  expressions. 

The  treatise  from  which  I  have  been  quoting  is  the  only  one 
of  his  which  has  survived  ;  and  the  narrative  which  tells  us  in 
what  manner  the  Tao  Teh  King  was  produced  is  curious  and 
interesting.  Here  it  is,  as  related  by  the  Chinese  historian,  Sze- 
ma  Khien  (who  lived  in  the  first  century  before  the  Christian 
era),  and  translated  by  Dr  Legge  {The  Religions  of  China,  p.  206): 

Lao-taze  cultivated  the  tao  and  virtue,  the  chief  aim  of  his  studies 
being  how  to  keep  himself  concealed  and  remain  tmknown.  He  continued 
to  reside  at  (the  capital  of)  Chau,  but,  after  a  long  time,  seeing  the  decay 
of  the  dynasty,  he  left  it,  and  went  away  to  the  gate  leading  out  of  the 
state  to  the  northwest.  Yin  Hsi,  keeper  of  the  gate,  said  to  him,  "You 
are  about  to  withdraw  yourself  out  of  sight ;  I  pray  you  to  compose  for 
me  first  a  book."  On  this  Lao-tsze  wrote  a  book  in  two  parts,  setting 
forth  his  views  on  Tao  and  virtue,  in  more  than  five  thousand  characters. 
He  then  went  away,  and  it  is  not  known  where  he  died.  He  was  a  superior 
man  who  liked  to  keep  himself  unknown. 

Though  Sze-ma  Khien  in  the  above  passage  says  that  it  was 
not  known  where  Lao-tsze  died,  Kwang-Tze,  the  most  famous 
follower  of  Lao-tsze,  but  living  two  hundred  years  after  him,  gives 
us  this  interesting  particular  about  his  death,  that  his  loss  was 
deeply  lamented  by  old  and  young.  We  at  the  present  day  should 
certainly  consider  this  as  evidence  of  the  attractiveness  of  his 
personality ;  but  in  his  own  day  another  inference  was  sometimes 
drawn.  His  friend  Khin  Shih,  offended  by  the  sight  of  what  he 
regarded  as  unmanly  grief,  "the  old  men  wailing  as  if  they  had 
lost  a  son,  the  young  men  wailing  as  if  they  had  lost  their  mother," 
declared  that  Lao-tsze  himself  must  have  failed  in  the  training 
of  his  disciples,  for  it  to  have  been  possible  that  they  should  so 
abandon  the  serenity  which  philosophy  prescribes.  Yet  Buddha 
and  Socrates  were  bewailed  by  their  followers  in  a  similar  manner; 
and  of  Confucius  too  we  read  that  his  disciples  mourned  at  his 
grave  for  three  years^ 

If  we  are  to  find  fault  with  Lao-tsze,  it  must  be  on  far  other 

*  See  Confucianism,  &c.,  by  Professor  Douglas,  p.  63. 


V]  CHINA   AND   JAPAN  126 

ground  than  this.     We  shall  have  to  admit  that  the  reproach 
)  which  is  sometimes  cast  on  Christianity,  but  which  is  not  I  think 
!  true  of  genuine  Christianity,  is  true  of  him  ;    he  assigned  less 
S  than  their  proper  value  to  those  positive  and  arduous  efforts,  and 
C  to  those  passionate  hopes,   out  of  which  the  world's  progress 
^  comes.     Passivity  is  too  much  honoured  by  him.     Yet  I  do  not 
like  to  call  him  a  dreamer,  as  Dr  Legge  does  ;   there  is  too  much 
truth  in  his  views  for  this  to  be  permissible.    Only  his  disregard 
of  the   enforcement   of   practical   energy   had   an   unfavourable 
effect  on  the  development  of  his  disciples  after  him  ;  and,  though 
far  from  being  an  atheist,  he  resembled  Buddha  and  the  great 
Brahmin  philosophers  in  not  having  an  adequate  feeUng  of  the 
manner  in  which  the  Divine  power  strengthens  men  from  within. 
In  one  anecdote  related  of  him,  Lao-tsze  is  made  to  appear 
rude.     It  is  possible  that  he  was  so,  though  his  tone  and  manner, 
if  these  had  been  fully  conveyed  to  us,  might  modify  the  impression 
of  his  reported  words  ;   but  in  any  case  it  will  be  proper  to  quote 
the  anecdote  as  it  has  come  down  to  us.     It  relates  to  the  single 
occasion  on  which  Lao-tsze  and  Confucius  are  recorded  to  have 
met.     Confucius  must  be  supposed  to  have  been  expounding  his 
own  views  with  some  animation  ;    the  reply  of  the  elder  philo- 
sopher is  caustic,  though  not  malevolent : 

"  I  have  heard,"  Lao-tsze  is  represented  as  saying,  "  that  a  good 
merchant,  though  he  have  rich  treasures  safely  stored,  appears  as  if  he 
were  poor  ;  and  that  the  superior  man,  though  his  virtue  be  conaplete, 
is  yet  to  outward  seeming  stupid.  Put  away  your  proud  air  and  many 
desires,  your  insinuating  habit  and  wild  will.  They  are  of  no  advantage 
to  you  ; — this  is  all  I  have  to  tell  you."     Religions  of  China,  p.  205. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  Lao-tsze  was  eighty-seven  years 
old  when  he  is  reported  as  speaking  thus,  and  Confucius  thirty- 
four.  It  does  not  appear  that  Confucius  took  offence  ;  but  his 
comment  afterwards  was  rather  humorous  : 

I  know  that  birds  can  fly,  fishes  swim,  and  animals  run.  But  the 
runner  may  be  snared,  the  swimmer  hooked,  and  the  flyer  shot  by  the 
arrow.  But  there  is  the  dragon  ;  I  cannot  tell  how  he  mounts  on  the 
wind  through  the  clouds,  and  rises  to  heaven.  Today  I  have  seen  Lao- 
tsze,  and  can  only  compare  him  to  the  dragon. 

That  is  to  say,  Lao-tsze's  philosophy  was  in  the  eyes  of 
Confucius  lofty,  but  unrealisable.  It  is  not  exactly  the  comment 
which  I  have  made  myself,  but  it  is  a  not  unnatural  comment, 
nor  quite  without  reason. 

A  more  celebrated  name  is  Confucius  than  Lao-tsze  ;  yet  as 
far  as  originality  is  concerned,  and  native  apprehension  of  the 


126  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

profoundest  principles  of  morality,  Lao-tsze  is  unquestionably 
the  superior.  When,  however,  we  compare  the  two  men,  not  as 
thinkers,  but  as  actors,  the  superiority  is  on  the  other  side.  It  is 
in  no  wise  necessary  to  set  in  opposition  to  each  other  two  men 
whose  qualifications  were  so  wholly  dififerent.  Confucius  was 
essentially,  as  Professor  Douglas  calls  him,  a  statesman  ;  for 
though  he  had  no  immediate  direction  of  state  affairs,  his  efforii 
was  always  directed  towards  practical  good,  not  theoretical 
insight.  As  he  said  of  himself,  he  was  a  lover  of  the  ancients,  a 
transmitter  of  the  wisdom  of  elder  generations ;  he  took  the  moral 
principles  that  were  traditional  in  his  country,  principles  by  no 
means  wanting  in  enlightenment,  and  devoted  all  his  labour  to 
enforcing  them  both  on  the  young  who  were  startling  in  life,  and 
on  rulers  who  needed  guidance  in  governing.  It  must  be  admitted 
that  he  attributed  too  much  value  to  the  outward  form  of  cere- 
monies, as  compared  with  their  inner  meaning  ;  yet  the  outward 
form  is  not  valueless  ;  there  is  a  function  performed  by  it,  in 
bringing  before  the  minds  of  men  thoughts  which  in  the  hurry 
of  life  they  might  otherwise  forget. 

Both  Lao-tsze  and  Confucius  lived  in  disturbed  times,  and 
the  remedy  which  they  respectively  sought  was  different;  Lao- 
tsze  endeavoured  to  penetrate  into  the  roots  of  the  moral  tempera- 
ment, Confucius  endeavoured  to  set  men  actually  to  work  with 
those  moral  qualities  which  they  possessed.  All  the  precepts  of 
Confucius  that  have  come  down  to  us  have  a  direct  practical 
bearing.     Thus  at  the  beginning  of  the  Hsido  King  he  writes  : 

Filial  piety  is  the  root  of  all  virtue,  and  the  stem  out  of  which  grows 
all  moral  teaching. . .  .  When  we  have  established  our  characters  by  the 
practice  of  the  filial  course,  so  as  to  make  our  name  famous  in  future 
ages,  and  thereby  glorify  our  parents — this  is  the  end  of  filial  piety.  It 
commences  with  the  service  of  parents  ;  it  proceeds  to  the  service  of 
the  ruler ;  it  is  completed  by  the  establishment  of  the  character.  Sacred 
Books  of  the  East,  vol.  iii.  p.  466. 

In  the  above  words  we  have  an  expansion  of  the  sentence 
with  which  lA  Ki  begins  :  "Always  and  in  everything  let  there 
be  reverence  "  ;  an  admonition  older  no  doubt  than  the  era  of 
Confucius,  but  which  certainly  was  very  dear  to  his  heart.  Yet 
Confucius  knew  that  filial  piety  must  not  be  slavish.  When  one 
of  his  followers  asked  him  whether  filial  piety  was  to  be  inter- 
preted as  meaning  simple  obedience,  he  answered  : 

What  words  are  these  !.  .  .When  a  case  of  unrighteous  conduct  is  con- 
cerned, a  son  must  b\'  no  means  keep  from  remonstrating  with  his  %ther, 
nor  a  minister  from  remonstrating  with  his  ruler.     Ibid.  vol.  iir.  pp.  483-4. 


V]  CHINA    AND    JAPAN  127 

For  a  minister  to  remonstrate  with  his  ruler  was  in  those 
times  not  free  from  danger ;  as  was  proved  by  the  followers  of 
Confucius  on  a  critical  occasion  some  three  centuries  after  his 
time.  Here  again  is  a  maxim  of  somewhat  similar  effect  from 
the  Appendices  to  the  Yi  King : 

The  superior  man,  in  his  intercourse  with  the  high,  uses  no  flattery, 
and  in  his  intercourse  with  the  low,  no  coarse  freedom :  does  not  this 
show  that  he  knows  the  springs  of  things  ?  Those  springs  are  the  slight 
beginnings  of  movement.     Ibid.  vol.  xvi.  p.  392. 

The  Appendices  to  the  Yi  King  are  not  in  their  entirety  the 
work  of  Confucius,  though  doubtless  the  work  of  his  followers  ; 
but  when  the  "  Master  "  is  expressly  quoted,  as  we  find  to  be 
the  case  in  regard  to  the  above  passage,  we  may  then  conclude 
that  we  have  the  words  of  Confucius  himseK.  So  it  is  in  the 
following  instructive  passages  : 

He  who  keeps  danger  in  mind  is  he  who  will  rest  safe  in  his  seat : 
he  who  keeps  ruin  in  mind  is  he  who  will  preserve  his  interests  secure  ; 
he  who  sets  the  danger  of  disorder  before  him  is  he  who  will  maintain 
the  state  of  order.  Therefore,  the  superior  man,  when  resting  in  safety, 
does  not  forget  that  danger  may  come  ;  when  in  a  state  of  security,  he 
does  not  forget  the  possibility  of  niin  ;  and  when  all  is  in  a  state  of  order, 
he  does  not  forget  that  disorder  may  come.  Thus  his  person  is  kept  safe, 
and  his  states  and  all  their  clans  can  be  preserved.    Ibid.  vol.  xvr.  pp.  391-2. 

The  following,  in  verse,  is  in  a  tenderer  strain  : 

One  man  his  lips  with  silence  seals  ; 
Another  all  his  mind  reveals. 
But  when  two  men  are  one  in  heart, 
Not  iron  bolts  keep  them  apart ; 
The  words  they  in  their  union  use, 
Fragrance  like  orchid  plants  diffuse. 

Ibid.  vol.  XVI.  p.  362. 
Again  : 

He  toils  with  success,  but  does  not  boast  of  it ;  he  achieves  merit, 
but  takes  no  virtue  to  himself  from  it : — -this  is  the  height  of  generous 
goodness,  and  speaks  of  the  man  who  with  great  merit  yet  p  aces  himself 
below  others.     Ibid.  vol.  xvi.  p.  362. 

Again,  on  the  necessity  of  reticence  : 

If  important  matters  in  the  germ  be  not  kept  secret,  that  will  be 
injurious  to  their  accomplishment.     Ibid.  vol.  xvi.  p.  363. 

Again,  on  the  quietude  of  natural  processes  : 

In  all  the  processes  taking  place  vmder  heaven,  what  is  there  of 
thinking  ?  what  is  there  of  anxious  scheming  ?  They  all  come  to  the 
same  successful  issue,  though  by  different  paths  ;  there  is  one  result, 
though  there  might  be  a  hundred  anxious  schemes.  What  is  there  of 
thinking  ?    what  is  there  of  anxious  scheming  ?     Ibid.  vol.  xvi.  p.  389. 


128  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

Interesting,  again,  is  the  following  testimony  to  his  favourite 
disciple  Yen  Hui  : 

I  may  venture  to  say  that  the  son  of  the  Yen  family  had  nearly 
attained  the  standard  of  perfection.  If  anything  he  did  was  not  good, 
he  was  sure  to  become  conscious  of  that ;  and  when  he  knew  it,  he  did 
not  do  the  thing  again.     Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xvi.  p.  392. 

I  quote  the  following  from  Dr  Legge's  work,  The  Religions 
of  China,  p.  137  : 

/        Tsze-kung  once  asked  him  [Confucius]  if  there  were  one  word  which 

{  would  serve  as  a  rule  of  conduct  for  all  the  life  ;   and  he  replied,  "  Is 

1  not  reciprocity  such  a  word  ?     What  you  do  not  want  done  to  yourself, 

'  do  not  do  to  others."     Subsequently,  when  the  disciple  told  him  that  he 

W8W  carrying  this  rule  into  practice,  he  replied,  "Tsze,  you  have  not  attained 

to  that."     He  was  thus  aware  of  the  difficulty  of  obeying  the  precept,  and 

he  confessed  on  one  occasion  that  he  himself  failed  to  do  so.     His  words 

then  also  showed  that  the  rule  had  for  him  not  only  a  negative  form,  but 

also  a  positive  form.     He  was  unable,  he  said,  to  take  the  initiative  in 

serving  his  father  as  he  would  require  his  son  to  serve  him. 

I  must  not  forget  to  quote  from  the  same  work  (p.  140)  yet 
another  utterance  : 

He  who  offends  against  Heaven  has  none  to  whom  he  can  pray; 

from  which  it  will  be  seen  that  Confucius  was  truly  religious  ;  as 
certainly  he  was,  though  he  was  well  aware  that  the  religious 
instincts  take  us  into  a  sphere  that  lies  beyond  our  absolute 
knowledge. 

It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  admiration  for  a  man  who  laboured 
so  persistently  as  Confucius  did  through  a  long  life  to  introduce 
order,  reverence,  and  kindness  into  the  actions  of  his  fellow- 
countrymen,  at  a  time  of  no  common  disorder,  and  amid  many 
rebuffs.  Whether  as  an  official  or  in  private  life,  he  appears  to 
have  been  singularly  faithful ;  it  would  be  too  much  to  say  that 
he  was  wholly  without  fault,  but  few  men  have  been  less  charge- 
able with  distinct  acts  of  wrong-doing.  As  regards  his  family 
relations,  he  wept  bitterly  over  the  death  of  his  mother ;  but  it  is 
possible,  though  the  evidence  is  very  slight,  that  he  was  wanting 
in  affection  for  his  wife. 

His  own  death  was  not  wanting  in  pathos.  He  had  lost  his 
two  best-loved  disciples  ;  and  in  the  spring  of  478  B.C.  he  felt 
his  end  was  near.  Let  me  quote  Dr  Legge  {Religions  of  China, 
p.  133)  : 

Early  one  morning,  we  are  told,  he  got  up  ;  and,  with  his  hands 
behind  his  back,  dragging  his  staff,  he  moved  about  by  the  door,  crooning 
over. 


V]  CHINA   AND   JAPAN  129 

The  great  mountain  must  crumble  ; 

The  strong  beam  must  break  ; 

And  the  wise  man  wither  away  like  a  plant. 

After  a  little  he  entered  the  house,  and  sat  down  opposite  the  door. 
Tsze-kung  had  heard  his  words,  and  said  to  himself,  "If  the  great  moun- 
tain crumble,  to  what  shall  I  look  up  ?  If  the  strong  beam  break,  and  the 
wise  man  wither  away,  on  whom  shall  I  lean  ?  I  fear  the  master  is  going 
to  be  ill."  With  this  he  hastened  into  the  house,  when  Confucius  told 
him  a  dream  which  he  had  had  in  the  night,  and  which  he  thought  presaged 
his  death,  adding,  "No  intelligent  monarch  arises;  there  is  no  prince  in 
the  kingdom  who  will  make  me  his  master  My  time  has  come  to  die." 
So  it  was.     He  took  to  his  couch,  and  after  seven  days  expired. 

He  was  mourned  with  great  sincerity  of  grief  by  his  disciples  ; 
but  the  period  of  his  extraordinary  influence  did  not  come  at 
once.  China  was  distracted  with  internal  commotions,  and  if  the 
cultured  and  learned  were  more  and  more  disposed  to  regard 
Confucius  as  the  model  of  excellence  (for  his  influence  even  then 
was  beginning  to  transcend  that  of  Lao-tsze),  this  was  not  equally 
the  case  with  kings  and  princes.  At  last,  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
third  century  B.C.,  the  dynasty  of  Ch§,u  having  wholly  disappeared, 
the  great,  powerful,  terrible  emperor  Shih  Hwang  Ti  came  to  the 
throne.  He  by  his  warlike  abihties  overcame  all  his  rivals,  and 
for  the  first  time  reduced  the  empire  to  an  absolute  unity  of  rule  ; 
he  built  the  famous  Great  Wall  to  be  a  protection  against  the 
outer  barbarians  ;  he  made  roads  through  the  whole  country  (it 
is  said) ;  he  centralised  the  military  administration,  and  disarmed 
the  provincial  centres  which  had  been  for  centuries  the  origin  of 
civil  wars ;  and  under  his  strong  hand  China  was  at  peace.  But 
in  the  course  of  his  unification  of  China  he  came  into  collision 
with  many  points  of  ancient  ceremonial,  valued  in  themselves, 
and  ratified  by  the  great  authority  of  Confucius.  With  the 
directness  of  a  practical  man,  impatient  of  the  past  when  it 
would  interfere  with  the  present,  he  desired  to  abrogate  or  curtail 
much  that  had  been  customary  in  religious  usage.  It  is  not  easy 
for  us  to  say  how  far  such  a  design  was  in  itself  a  good  one  ;  for 
ceremonial  ministers  sometimes  to  genuine  feeling  and  sometimes 
to  the  decayed  semblance  of  genuine  feeling,  and  in  the  one  case 
it  is  good,  in  the  other  case  bad.  But  the  separation  of  vital 
feeling  from  its  dead  imitation  is  always  a  difficult  task  ;  and 
Shih  Hwang  Ti,  who  was  wont  to  sit  on  his  throne  with  a  naked 
sword  in  his  hand,  was  not  prone  to  delicacy  of  procedure.  The 
literary  classes  were,  above  all  men  in  China,  conservators  of 
ceremonial,   and   a  deep   animosity   soon   arose    between    them 

M.  D.  A.  9 


130  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

and  Shih  Hwang  Tt.  Probably  there  would  have  been  a  way 
to  reconciliation,  if  the  reverence  paid  to  L&o-tsze  had  been 
as  great  among  the  people  generally  as  the  reverence  paid  to 
Confucius,  for  in  that  case  the  literary  classes  would  have  been 
divided,  and  would  not  in  their  entirety  have  faced  the  monarchy 
as  a  hostile  power.  But  Confucius  had  become  then,  as  he  is  now, 
the  recognised  Master  of  thought  in  China.  Accordingly,  in  a 
great  meeting  held  at  the  imperial  capital,  Hienyang,  in  the  year 
213  B.C.,  the  smouldering  fire  broke  out.  The  emperor  was  pre- 
siding ;  his  prime  minister,  Lisseh,  was  by  his  side  ;  governors 
of  provinces,  officials,  and  the  representatives  of  literature  and 
of  ceremonial  were  gathered  for  consultation.  (I  take  the  main 
points  of  the  scene  from  D.  C.  Boulger's  History  of  China,  vol.  i. 
pp.  72  sqq.)  The  emperor  (sword  in  hand,  we  must  suppose)  called 
upon  those  present  to  give  their  candid  opinion  of  his  government 
and  his  legislation.  Candour  has  not  always  been  manifested  by 
an  audience  under  such  circumstances ;  but  the  followers  of 
Confucius  had  been  trained  on  principles  that  implanted  courage 
in  their  hearts,  and  Shih  Hwang  Ti  was  destined  to  hear  words 
of  candour  on  this  occasion.  At  first,  indeed,  a  courtier  arose, 
and  delivered  a  paneg)nric  wholly  agreeable  to  his  exalted  hearer, 
whom  he  described  as  having  surpassed  the  very  greatest  of  his 
imperial  predecessors.  But  the  learned  part  of  the  assembly  were 
stung  by  words  which  seemed  a  dishonour  to  the  ancient  mon- 
archs  ;  one  of  them  rose,  and  stigmatising  the  speech  which  he 
had  just  heard  as  "  vile  flattery,"  advocated  the  restoration  of 
those  separate  principalities  throughout  China  which  it  had  been 
the  great  work  of  Shih  Hwang  Ti  to  abolish.  This  was  certainly 
an  extreme  proposition,  and  when  the  emperor  refused  to  listen 
to  it,  and  called  upon  his  prime  minister,  Lisseh,  to  justify  that 
remodelling  of  the  empire  which  had  been  carried  out,  he  was 
well  within  his  rights.  But  Lisseh  was  not  content  with  vindi- 
cating what  had  been  done  ;  he  perceived  that  the  occasion  was 
a  critical  one,  and  he  determined  within  himself  that  now  was  the 
time  for  delivering  his  imperial  master  from  his  last  and  most 
irreconcilable  enemy,  the  formidable  literary  classes.  He  demanded 
that  all  books  throughout  the  empire  should  be  burnt,  except 
such  as  treated  of  medicine,  agriculture,  and  divination.  These 
three  subjects  appeared  to  him  to  be  of  practical  utility  ;  but 
history,  in  his  opinion,  only  fed  men's  minds  with  phantom-like 
memories,  and  rendered  them  incapable  of  appreciating  the  true 
needs  of  mankind.     The  emperor  accepted  the  suggestion  of  his 


V]  CHINA   AND   JAPAN  131 

minister,  and  directed  him  to  lose  no  time  in  carrying  out  the 
burning  of  the  books. 

Thus  the  forces  of  authority,  all  over  China,  were  set  to  work 
to  destroy  every  scrap  of  history  and  of  literature  (in  the  proper 
sense  of  that  word)  which  could  be  found.  The  Uterary  men 
had  been  foolishly  conservative ;  but  they  had  not  deserved  such  a 
sentence  as  this,  and  the  emperor's  decree  meant  the  bringing  back 
of  China  to  barbarism.  When,  then,  we  read  that  four  hundred 
and  sixty  literary  men  were  buried  alive  on  the  charge  of  impeding 
the  execution  of  the  decree,  we  can  only  esteem  them  as  martyrs 
in  a  just  cause  ;  and  despite  the  real  services  which  Shih  Hwang 
It  had  rendered  in  other  ways  to  the  well-being  of  China,  we  can 
only  regard  his  death,  which  took  place  three  years  after  the 
promulgation  of  the  decree,  as  a  happy  event  and  a  deliverance 
for  the  best  interests  of  China.  He  died,  and  the  Ch'in  dynasty 
(of  which  he  was  the  most  remarkable  member)  survived  him 
only  some  four  years  ;  and  the  Han  dynasty,  which  next  came 
into  power,  was  anxious  in  every  way  to  repair  the  destruction 
which  had  been  committed.  Every  comer  of  the  empire  was 
ransacked  for  manuscripts  which  had  been  hidden  away  from  the 
fury  of  the  destroyer ;  what  could  not  be  recovered  from  actual 
written  documents  was  often  supplied  by  the  incomparable 
memory  of  Chinese  students ;  and  in  the  end,  though  some 
things  had  been  irrecoverably  lost,  quite  enough  remained  to 
enable  the  Confucian  teaching  again  to  take  its  place,  which 
it  retains  to  the  present  hour,  as  the  most  cherished  possession 
of  the  whole  Chinese  people. 

The  reader  will  not  think  me  unregardful  of  the  great  merit 
of  Confucius ;  but  no  doubt  his  fame  is  partly  due  to  the  fact 
that  he  feU  in  with  the  general  current  of  feeling  and  thought  in 
his  own  people.  Lao-tsze,  who  discerned  the  power  which  lies 
in  the  quiet  unforced  motions  of  the  spirit,  deserves  at  least  as 
much  attention  from  us  now ;  and  the  similarity  between  his 
ethics  and  Christian  ethics  will  strike  every  one,  though  there  are 
also  obvious  differences. 

An  anecdote  in  Book  xxxi.  of  the  writings  of  Kwang-tsze  is 
interesting  as  showing  the  difference  between  Lao-tsze  and  Con- 
fucius in  a  manner  to  bring  out  the  strength  of  Lao-tsze  and  the 
weak  side  of  Confucius  ;  and  though  Kwang-tsze  (the  most  dis- 
tinguished of  the  school  of  Lao-tsze)  would  naturally  lay  stress 
on  the  points  in  which  his  own  master  had  the  superiority,  there 
is  no  dishonour  to  Confucius  implied  in  it.     The  narrative  tells 

9—2 


132  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

how  Confucius,  wandering  in  a  forest  with  his  disciples,  at  last 
left  them  and  met  an  old  fisherman,  with  whom  he  conversed. 
The  old  fisherman  was  a  follower  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Tao  ;  and 
after  pointing  out  to  Confucius  the  troubles  and  frequent  faults 
of  personal  conduct  which  are  unavoidable  in  an  active  career  of 
political  or  philosophical  teaching  (such  a  career  as  that  to  which 
Confucius  had  devoted  himself)  at  last  plainly  tells  the  great 
philosopher  that  he  had  not  "guarded  his  proper  Truth." 

,  Confucius  with  an  air  of  sadness  said,  "Allow  me  to  ask  what  it  is 
)  that  you  call  my  proper  Truth."  The  stranger  replied,  "A  maji's  proper 
(  Truth  is  pure  sincerity  in  its  highest  degree — without  this  pure  sincerity 
'  one  cannot  move  others.     Hence  if  one  only  forces  himself  to  wail,  however 

sadly  he  may  do  so,  it  is  not  real  sorrow  ;  if  he  forces  himself  to  be  angry, 
,  however  he  may  seem  to  be  severe,  he  excites  no  awe  ;  if  he  forces  himself 
•,  to  show  affection,  however  he  may  smile,  he  awakens  no  harmonious 
/  reciprocation.  True  grief,  without  a  sound,  is  yet  sorrowful  ;  true  anger, 
r  without  any  demonstration,  yet  awakens  awe  ;    true  affection,  without  a 

smile,  yet  produces  a  harmonious  reciprocation.  Given  this  truth  within, 
'  it  exercises  a  spiritual  eflficewjy  without,  and  this  is  why  we  count  it  so 
)  valuable. .  .  .  Rites  are  prescribed  for  the  practice  of   the  common  people  ; 

man's   proper  Truth  is  what  he  has  received  from  Heaven,   operating 

spontaneously,  tmd  unchangeable."    Sacred  Books   of  the  East,  vol.    XL. 

pp.  198-9. 

An  admirable  passage ;  and  we  are  not  surprised  to  learn  that 
Confucius,  with  that  humility  which  was  his  most  charming 
characteristic,  bowed  twice  to  the  fisherman,  and  begged,  with 
extraordinary  thanks,  to  have  the  honour  of  coming  to  hear  him 
again.  But  this  the  fisherman  declined,  and  no  doubt  rightly  ; 
he  had  said  his  say,  more  words  would  but  have  spoiled  it.  Now 
the  followers  of  Confucius  had  witnessed  this  scene  from  a  distance, 
and  felt  unbounded  amazement  when  they  saw  their  master, 
whom  they  had  been  accustomed  to  see  standing  erect  and  proud 
before  princes  and  rulers,  bowing  low  before  an  old  fisherman  ; 
and  one  of  them  remonstrated  with  him  for  so  doing.     But  Con- 

(*fucius  replied,  "  If  you  see  a  man  of  superior  wisdom  and  good- 
ness, and  do  not  honour  him,  you  want  the  great  characteristic  of 

'  humanity."  These  are  words  to  be  remembered  ;  and  yet  perhaps 
Confucius  did  not  mean  to  give  up  his  own  case  so  entirely  as 
would  at  first  sight  appear  from  this  narrative.  The  old  fisher- 
man, and  Lao-tsze  himself,  hardly  sufficiently  felt  the  danger 
whicli  lies  in  a  man  becoming  a  hermit,  and  this  danger  at  any 
rate  ('onfucius  escaped  entirely. 

It  has  been  the  object  of  this  chapter,  in  the  main,  to  describe 
the  s(>niinal  elements  of  Chinese  belief  and  practice  ;    but  it  is 


V]  CHINA   AND   JAPAN  133 

impossible  altogether  to  abstain  from  noticing  the  historical  re- 
sults of  that  belief  and  practice  in  subsequent  ages.  For  China 
has  never  fallen  into  the  confusion  into  which  India  has  fallen. 
China,  like  Japan,  stands  independent  before  the  world,  anxious 
to  learn,  and  capable  of  learning  ;  but  not  weakened  by  indolence 
or  by  deep-seated  internal  conflicts. 

The  two  most  distinguished  followers  of  Lao-tsze  and  Con- 
fucius respectively,  Kwang-tsze  and  Mang  (or  Mencius)  both  lived 
in  the  fourth  century  before  Christ ;  and  they  are  interesting 
persons,  but  I  must  not  say  more  about  them  here. 

The  cataclysm  which  had  threatened  to  overwhelm  Chinese 
literature  and  thought  when  the  powerful  emperor  Shih  Hwang 
T1  endeavoured  to  destroy  nearly  all  the  existent  literature  of  the 
country,  was  not  only  stayed  by  the  accession  of  Kaoti,  the 
foimder  of  the  Han  dynasty,  to  the  throne  in  206  B.C. ;  a  great  out- 
burst of  literary  activity  took  place  in  China  immediately  after 
that  date.  Moreover,  from  the  first  century  of  the  Christian  era 
onwards,  Buddhism  gained  a  footing  in  China,  and  grew  with  no 
slight  success.  Incorrect  as  it  is  to  think  of  Buddhism  as  the 
rehgion  of  China  (an  error  not  infrequently  committed  by  writers 
of  the  western  world),  it  is  yet  one  of  the  religions  there  recog- 
nised, and  has  no  smaU  number  of  adherents ;  and  it  has  pro- 
duced a  considerable  (and  I  believe  beneficial)  effect  on  the  whole 
tone  of  Chinese  feeling.  Only  one  effect  which  we  must  regard 
as  unfortunate  has  been  produced  by  it.  The  weakness  of 
Buddhism  lies  in  its  want  of  a  rational  theology,  and  its  followers 
have  too  often  supplied  this  want  by  superstitious  imaginations. 
This  has  happened  in  the  case  of  Chinese  Buddhism,  and  Taoism 
has  caught  the  infection,  and  is  immersed  in  superstitions. 
Though  indeed  Taoism  had  been  by  no  means  free  from  super- 
stitious beliefs  and  practices  before  the  advent  of  Buddhism  into 
China,  yet  the  advent  of  Buddhism  greatly  increased  the  evil. 
Those  who  desire  to  know  more  on  this  subject  may  consult 
Dr  James  Legge's  work  on  The  Religions  of  China ;  and  I  cannot 
close  this  part  of  my  inquiry  without  expressing  my  sense  of  the 
debt  due  to  Dr  Legge  in  regard  to  this  whole  subject.  He  is  (as 
far  as  an  unlearned  person  may  judge)  impartial,  and  yet  he  is 
in  love  with  his  subject. 

There  has  been  no  radical  change  in  the  Chinese  character 
since  the  first  century  of  our  era.  Let  me  quote,  as  exemplifjdng 
this,  the  evidence  respecting  the  Chinese  people  of  the  missionaries 
Carpini  and  Rubruquis  in  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century. 


134  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  [ch. 

The  following  translations  are  from  the  work  on  China  by  R.  K. 
Douglas,  in  the  series  entitled,  Story  of  the  Nations.  Here,  first, 
is  what  Carpini  says  of  the  Chinese  (p.  27) : 

They  seem  indeed  to  be  kindly  and  polished  folks  enough.  They 
have  no  beard,  and  in  character  of  countenance  have  a  considerable 
resemblance  to  the  Mongols,  but  tire  not  so  broad  in  the  face.  They  have 
a  peculiar  language.  Their  betters  as  craftsmen  in  every  art  practised  by 
man  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  whole  world.  Their  country  is  very  rich 
in  com,  in  wine,  in  gold  and  silver,  in  silk,  and  in  every  kind  of  produce 
tending  to  the  support  of  mankind. 

And  here  is  Rubruquis  (p.  28)  : 

Those  Cathayans  are  little  fellows,  speaking  much  through  the  nose, 
and,  as  is  general  with  all  those  Eastern  people,  their  eyes  are  very  narrow. 
They  are  first-rate  eulists  of  every  kind,  and  their  physicians  have  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  virtues  of  herbs,  and  an  admirable  skill  in  diagnosis  by 
the  pulse.  The  common  money  of  Cathay  consists  of  pieces  of  cotton 
paper  about  a  palm  in  length  and  breadth,  upon  which  lines  are  printed 
resembling  the  seals  of  Mangu  Khan  (the  third  in  succession  from  Jenghiz 
Khan) ;  they  do  their  writing  with  a  pencil  such  as  painters  paint  with, 
and  a  single  character  of  theirs  comprehends  several  letters  so  as  to  form 
a  whole  word. 

Again  in  these  passages,  as  in  all  those  quoted  before  in  this 
chapter,  a  people  is  described  endowed  with  many  excellent 
qualities ;  a  people  industrious,  intelligent,  friendly.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Chinese  character  has  not  been  well  adapted  to 
impose  restraint  on  the  vices  of  rulers,  or  to  shake  off  customs  of 
long  standing  when  these  are  shown  to  be  injurious.  These 
defects  are  capable  of  being  amended  by  intercourse  with  other 
nations  ;  and  the  positive  proficiency  of  the  Chinese  in  stability 
and  force  is  an  element  that  must  never  be  forgotten,  when  the 
general  progress  of  mankind  is  being  recounted.  Perhaps  their 
greatest  want  has  been  in  the  region  of  idealism,  of  ardent  love, 
of  high  enthusiastic  hope  reaching  out  into  the  far  future.  To 
send  fire  into  the  earth  has  not  been  their  province. 

If  in  this  chapter  I  have  said  more  about  the  Chinese  character 
and  philosophy  than  about  the  Chinese  religion,  this  is  because 
religious  problems  have  been  less  to  the  forefront  in  China  than 
problems  of  morality  and  of  character.  It  is  not  that  the  Chinese 
have  been,  or  are,  irreligious.  Certainly  they  are  not  atheistic, 
and  the  worship  of  parents  and  ancestors,  which  forms  the  greater 
part  of  their  practical  religion,  is  not  devoid  of  true  feeling,  and 
even  of  some  true  instinct.  But  though  there  may  be  true  in- 
stinct in  it,  the  instinct  is  an  imperfect  one,  and  does  not  reach 
to  the  root  of  human  nature.     A  real  share  in  the  development 


V]  CHINA    AND    JAPAN  135 

of  mankind  has  belonged  to  China  ;  but  the  most  profound  causes 
of  development  have  lain  elsewhere, 

I  must  not  close  this  chapter  without  some  remarks  on  that 
other  race  of  the  far  east,  akin  to  the  Chinese  and  yet  different 
from  them — the  Japanese.  Japan  arrived  at  civilisation,  and  at 
conscious  religion,  much  later  than  China.  Tradition  in  Japan 
goes  no  further  back  than  about  600  B.C.,  and  though  religion 
under  the  form  of  ancestor-worship  existed  from  time  immemorial, 
the  softening  of  religion  by  morality,  and  the  consequent  removal 
of  barbarous  rites  does  not  appear  to  have  begun  earlier  than  the 
Christian  era^.  The  great  refining  influence  of  Buddhism  was 
introduced  into  Japan  about  the  sixth  century  of  our  era  ;  it 
existed  for  centuries  side  by  side  with  the  primitive  religion  of 
Japan,  called  Shinto-ism;  to-day  it  is  declining  as  a  creed,  though 
the  moral  work  that  it  has  done  is  not  small.  As  well  as  I  can 
gather  from  what  I  have  read  on  the  subject,  religion ^  and  morality 
have  not  been  marked  by  that  strong  originality  in  Japan  which 
we  find  in  China  ;  and  yet  it  is  difficult  to  say  that  the  Japanese 
are  inferior  to  the  Chinese.  The  balance  on  the  Japanese  side  is 
restored  by  the  extraordinary  power  of  initiative  which  the  Japan- 
■  ese  have  always  possessed,  and  in  which  the  Chinese  have  been 
.■  somewhat  lacking.  I  cannot  in  the  present  work  recount,  even 
i  cursorily,  the  history  of  Japan  ;  but  every  reader  of  that  history 
,-J  must  be  struck  with  the  swiftness  and  energy  of  purpose  which 
V  has  always  marked  the  Japanese  conduct  of  affairs,  in  contrast 
with  the  comparatively  slow  and  acquiescent  type  of  the  Chinese 
practical  conduct.  The  Japanese  repelled  the  great  Mongol 
sovereign,  Kubla  Khan,  who  had  conquered  China ;  they  have 
always  held  their  own  as  against  foreign  nations  with  singular 
independence,  and  I  need  not  say  what  remarkable  evidence 
their  recent  history  has  given,  both  of  the  power  of  internal 
'  change  and  of  self-sacrifice  and  vigour  in  war.  Yet  it  would  be 
incorrect  to  think  that  these  qualities,  admirable  though  they  are, 
reach  to  the  profoundest  depths  of  the  human  heart,  or  supply  a 
foundation  on  which  to  build  for  eternity.  To  show  how  such  a 
foundation  can  be  attained,  belongs  to  a  future  part  of  this  work. 
Meanwhile,  in  my  next  chapter  I  shall  return  from  the  far  east 
to  the  west,  and  begin  the  account  of  religion  as  it  existed  in  those 
nations  which  we  call  classical — the  nations  of  Greece  and  Rome. 

^  See  Lafcadio  Heam's  Japan  :   an  Interpretation,  p.  46. 

*  This  is  the  impression  that  I  have  derived  from  Lafcadio  Hearn's  works ;  and 
he  was,  I  suppose,  more  intimately  acquainted  with  Japan  than  any  other  European 
writer. 


CHAPTER  VI 

ANCIENT   RELIGION  :     GREECE 

In  the  foregoing  chapters  I  have  dealt  with  the  reUgion  of 
nations  who  were  in  their  difiFerent  ways  famous  before  the 
Christian  era,  but  whose  fame  to  us  of  the  twentieth  century 
of  the  Christian  era  is  much  dimmed  by  the  obscurities  which 
time  has  thrown  in  our  way,  and  by  the  scantiness  of  extant 
historical  records.  It  is  true  that  the  history  of  China  shines  to 
us  with  a  clearer  light  than  the  histories  of  India  and  Persia; 
and  possibly  if  Chinese  literature  were  better  known  to  us,  this 
superiority  of  China  might  be  yet  further  accentuated,  but  I 
speak  of  history  as  it  appears  to  us  Europeans  now,  with  our 
present  means  of  knowledge.  These  three  vast  countries,  when 
studied  in  their  remote  epochs,  have  a  real  store  of  spiritual  light 
for  us  at  the  present  day  ;  but  the  details  of  their  history  are  for 
the  most  part  shrouded  in  darkness.  Coming  from  the  histories 
of  ancient  China,  India  or  Persia,  to  the  histories  of  Greece  and 
Rome,  is  like  leaving  a  scene  of  dim  twilight  for  the  full  blaze  of 
day.  The  history  of  Israel,  to  which  I  must  presently  come,  may 
be  placed,  for  clearness  of  illumination,  intermediate  between  the 
history  of  China  and  the  history  of  Greece.  We  know  nearly  as 
much  about  king  David  as  we  know  about  Socrates,  or  about 
Caesar.  But  there  is  no  other  hero  or  prophet  of  Israel  of  whom 
this  can  be  said  ;  about  Isaiah,  for  instance,  we  hardly  know  as 
much  as  we  do  about  Confucius. 

It  is  Greece,  not  Rome,  to  which  the  credit  of  this  illuminating 
power  chiefly  belongs  ;  for  Greece  initiated  what  Rome  inherited. 
The  early  days  of  Roman  history,  from  the  times  of  the  later 
kings  onwards,  seem  to  have  been  recorded  more  or  less  by  con- 
temporary annalists  ;  but  the  vast  range  which  belongs  to  the 
human  intellect,  and  the  infinite  charm  of  literature  and  art,  were 
wholly  unsuspected  by  the  Romans  until,  in  the  third  century 
before  Christ,  they  began  by  slow  steps  to  derive  instruction  from 
the  Greeks.     Greece  is  as  wonderful  on  the  human  side  as  Israel 


CH.  VI]  ANCIENT    RELIGION :     GREECE  137 

is  on  the  religious  side,  but  the  humanity  of  the  Greek  genius  is 
very  different  from  the  solemn  law-abiding  tenderness  which 
characterises  the  teaching  of  Buddha  and  Lao-tsze  and  Confucius; 
it  is  full  of  vivid  emotions  which  seek  for  a  law  but  do  not  find 
a  law.  The  Greek  spirit  vivified  those  who  came  under  its  influ- 
ence abundantly,  but  it  was  imperfect  on  the  side  of  ruling  and 
guiding  power ;  and  yet  the  noblest  Greek  minds  were  ardently 
in  search  after  that  ruling  and  guiding  power,  the  want  of  which 
was  so  manifest  in  the  Greek  race  of  their  own  day.  The  variety 
of  the  Greek  impulses  was  in  truth  not  favourable  to  the  attain- 
ment by  the  entire  race  of  dominating  power  in  any  single  defi- 
nite line,  but  the  capacities  of  mankind,  if  not  organised  or  made 
permanent  by  the  Greek  spirit,  were  most  notably  enlarged  by  it, 
more  than  by  any  other  race  in  ancient  times — and  may  we  not 
also  add,  more  than  by  any  single  nation  in  modern  times  ? 

Moreover,  there  was  one  particular  kind  of  virtue,  not  in 
itself  of  a  ruling  character,  but  still  indispensable  to  rulers,  the 
virtue  of  a  just  scepticism,  which  owes  its  origin  to  the  Greeks. 
Not  to  be  too  ready  to  say  "  I  know  "  ;  to  hold  back  from  abso- 
lute assertions,  where  probability  only  is  attainable  ;  this  is  a 
very  general  characteristic  of  the  Greek  mind,  and  a  salutary  one. 
Hence  it  was  that  accurate  science  and  accurate  history  took 
their  rise  in  Greece,  and  the  courage  of  Socrates  brought  this 
scepticism  to  bear  on  the  highest  subjects  of  human  thought, 
religion  and  ethics.  Had  Socrates  been  an  irreligious  man,  this 
scepticism  would  have  been  a  destructive  force  in  his  hands  ; 
but  reUgious  feehng,  and  an  obedient  orderly  spirit,  were  strong 
in  him.  All  things  considered,  the  influence  of  Socrates,  though 
never  recognised  in  such  formal  ways  as  the  influence  of  Buddha 
and  Confucius  and  Zoroaster,  has  been  fully  as  great  as  that  of 
any  of  those  famous  teachers.  In  Socrates,  quite  as  much  as  in 
Buddha,  we  feel  that  we  are  approaching,  though  not  attaining, 
the  ultimate  goal  of  a  spiritual  command  which  should  gather  all 
the  emotions  of  men  under  its  fostering  charge. 

With  this  explanatory  preface,  let  me  begin  my  sketch  of  the 
development  of  the  spiritual  elements  in  ancient  Greece. 

The  primitive  religion  of  the  races  inhabiting  Greece,  like  the 
primitive  religion  of  all  Aryan  races,  was  the  worship  of  personi- 
fied natural  forces.  Zeus  was  the  god  of  the  heaven  ;  Poseidon, 
of  the  sea  ;  Demeter,  the  goddess  of  the  earth  regarded  as  nourish- 
ing men  ;  Gaia,  the  earth  in  a  more  general  sense  ;  Hades,  the 
god  of  the  regions  below  the  earth,  whither  the  shades  of  men 


138  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  [ch. 

went  after  death ;  Hephaestus,  the  god  of  fire,  especially  of  vol- 
canic fires ;  Dionysus  (who  later  was  called  Bacchus)  the  god  of 
the  vine,  with  its  wonderful  intoxicating  force  ;  Apollo,  probably 
the  god  of  the  sun  at  all  times,  certainly  from  the  time  of  iEschylus 
onwards ;  though  this  his  central  signification  was  sometimes  for- 
gotten (as  for  instance  in  Homer  and  Hesiod)  amid  the  abundance 
of  functions  attributed  to  him.  But  the  Greek  mind,  with  its 
extraordinary  rapidity  of  imagination,  could  not  rest,  as  the  poets 
of  the  Rig- Veda  rested,  in  simple  personification ;  the  Greek  gods 
became  a  picturesque  assemblage  of  beings  in  no  way  differing  from 
men,  except  in  their  greater  power;  beings  who  quarrelled  and 
fought,  who  ate  and  drank,  who  married  and  begat  children,  who 
debated  in  pohtical  fashion,  and  formed  political  parties.  This  is 
the  aspect  of  rehgion  which  we  find  in  Homer ;  a  most  singular  and 
unparalleled  stripping  away  of  mystery  from  the  most  mysterious 
of  all  subjects  !  Yet,  with  all  the  sensuous  descriptions  of  divine 
things  in  Homer,  it  is  plain  that  there  was  a  certain  subtlety  in 
the  Greek  mind  even  at  that  date;  or  how  else  should  we  find 
Athena,  the  goddess  of  wisdom,  in  the  list  of  Greek  divinities  ? 
That  is  not  quite  an  obvious  conception  to  a  rude  race ;  nor 
perhaps  is  even  Aphrodite,  the  goddess  of  love,  an  obvious  con- 
ception to  a  mind  from  which  an  intellectual  interest  in  the  world 
is  wholly  absent.  It  was  not  for  nothing  that  the  Greeks  sprang 
from  the  Aryan  race,  the  race  of  nobles  ;  an  intrinsic  breadth  of 
conception  belonged  to  them ;  but  must  we  not  add,  with  some 
rare  exceptions,  an  intrinsic  want  of  depth  also  ? 

When  we  seek  to  penetrate  into  the  first  formation  of  that 
people  whom  in  their  later  development  we  call  Hellenes  or 
Greeks,  and  whom  under  either  name  we  know  so  well,  we  are 
baffled  by  cross  lights  coming  from  many  quarters  with  uncertain 
meanings.  Hellas  is  recognised  by  Homer  as  but  a  small  tract 
of  country  ;  the  Hellenes  as  apparently  but  a  small  tribe  ;  at 
least  the  only  line  of  Homer  in  which  they  are  mentioned  with  a 
more  extensive  signification  was  rejected  in  ancient  times  as 
spurious.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  this  small  tribe  expanded 
until  it  filled  the  whole  peninsula,  casting  out  all  its  rivals  ? 
There  is  not  the  smallest  scrap  of  legend  or  myth,  much  less  of 
trustworthy  history,  testifying  to  such  an  expansion.  How  came 
it  then  that  the  whole  race  acquired  the  name  of  Hellenes  ? 
What  was  that  other  race  whom  we  read  of  in  very  ancient 
times  as  overspreading  not  only  Greece  proper,  but  the  islands 
and  part  of  Asia  Minor,  the  Pelasgians  ?     What  are  we  to  think 


VI]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  139 

of  the  Cretans  in  prehistoric  times,  and  their  recently  discovered 
inscriptions,  stUl  undecipherable  ?  We  wander  in  mists  when 
such  questions  as  these  are  brought  forward  ;  but  when  we  come 
to  the  Trojan  war  and  to  the  chief  poet  of  that  time.  Homer,  a 
certain  light  does  seem  to  dawn  upon  us.  It  is  not  easy  to  resist 
the  impression  that  the  Trojan  war  was  an  important  reality,  and 
that  it  had  an  immense  unifjdng  effect  on  all  the  inhabitants  of 
the  country  which  we  now  call  Greece  ;  though  this  unity  must 
not  be  understood  to  be  a  unity  of  government,  but  of  sentiment 
and  finally  of  language.  That  the  Trojan  war  had  this  great 
result,  appears  to  have  been  the  opinion  of  Thucydides,  and  it 
is  not  easy  to  think  of  any  fact  which  could  better  give  a  start 
to  that  vital  unity  which  (amid  all  varieties  of  government)  held 
together  Spartans  and  Athenians  and  Boeotians  and  Thessalians 
and  many  other  tribes,  as  being  essentially  a  single  people. 
But  the  military  unity  achieved  by  the  Trojan  war  would  have 
been  fleeting  and  transient,  if  the  record  of  it  had  not  been 
enshrined  in  noble  works  of  literature  ;  and  out  of  a  mass  of  lost 
literature  these  two  great  poems,  the  Diad  and  the  Odyssey,  sur- 
vive as  examples  of  that  spiritual  movement  which  first  gave  to 
Greece  its  worth  and  dignity.  Epic  poetry,  simg  by  a  thousand 
bards  and  culminating  in  two  poems  distinguished  by  no  slight 
moral  force,  was  a  primary  source  and  cause  of  the  Greece  which 
we  know.  Not,  of  course,  that  mere  poetry  could  have  had  this 
effect ;  but  poetry  enshrining  the  memory  of  great  and  worthy 
actions  had  this  effect. 

We  must  then  accept  Homer  and  his  compeers  (and  it  matters 
little  whether  the  transcendent  poet  who  produced  the  IHad  was 
the  same  as  the  transcendent  poet  who  produced  the  Odyssey, 
or  whether  certain  books  in  either  poem  were  added  at  a  later 
date)  as  a  chief  origin  of  the  spirit  which  made  Greece  one  land 
and  not  many  petty  districts,  each  single  and  isolated  ;  and  this 
great  service  could  not  have  been  performed  without  the  aid  of 
religion.  Crude  as  is  the  religion  of  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey, 
the  crudeness  of  it  would  hardly  strike  men  in  an  age  so  vigorous 
and  so  daring  ;  and  it  elevated  men  above  the  narrow  sphere  of 
daily  life.  The  morality,  again,  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  is  im- 
perfect, whether  as  relating  to  men  or  to  gods,  but  inequalities 
in  moral  treatment  can  never  surprise  us  ;  and  the  great  interest 
of  the  two  poems  lies  in  the  amount  of  genuine  love,  affection, 
faithfulness,  and  comradeship  in  service,  which  the  poet  elicits 
out  of  a  groundwork  of  war  and  violent  personal  antagonisms.    - 


140  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  [ch. 

The  religion  and  morality  taught  by  Homer  do  not  lack  power, 
but  they  do  lack  depth,  and  especially  does  the  religion  lack 
depth.  This  is  not  merely  because  it  was  polytheistic,  though 
the  polytheism  was  a  hindrance  ;  but  it  is  plain  that  Homer 
shrank  from  definitely  ascribing  righteousness  or  goodness  to  the 
gods.  The  gods  in  Homer  do  on  the  whole  favour  the  right 
side,  and  are  evidently  intended  to  do  so,  but  the  reasons  which 
are  represented  as  influencing  the  divine  action  are  always  of  an 
adventitious,  casual  sort ;  the  gods  will  favour  a  hero  because 
he  has  offered  to  them  in  sacrifice  thighs  of  oxen  and  goats  ;  or 
they  will  disfavour  him  for  adherence  to  the  party  whom  they 
dislike  ;  or  Zeus  weighs  his  fortune  in  the  balances,  and  Fate 
assigns  to  him  life  or  death.  One  would  say  that  among  the 
gods,  as  among  the  men,  there  is  a  preponderance  of  right  feeling ; 
but  no  saving  power  is  attributed  to  righteousness  ;  all  men  in 
the  end  succumb  to  Fate,  and  the  shadowy  existence  of  the  dead 
is  not  apportioned  according  to  any  distinction  drawn  from  their 
conduct  in  this  life.  No  principle  is  ever  affirmed  in  the  Iliad 
or  the  Odyssey,  according  to  which  the  gods,  either  in  this  life 
or  in  a  future  life,  recompense  the  good  as  good,  and  the  bad  as 
bad.  Right  feeling  is  abundant,  but  it  never  frames  itself  into 
moral  principle  of  any  kind. 

From  this  kind  of  spiritual  atmosphere  diffused  over  the 
Greek  race,  it  followed  that  the  Greeks  had  abundance  of  sym- 
pathetic instincts,  fitfully  and  often  violently  manifested,  abun- 
dance of  imaginative  religion,  but  little  consistency  or  government 
in  spiritual  matters.  Nevertheless,  the  Greek  race  were  always 
feeling  after  spiritual  government,  and  even  before  the  time  of 
the  composition  of  the  Homeric  poems,  the  great  oracle  of  Delphi 
had  begun  to  establish  itself  as  a  common  centre  for  the  whole 
race.  We  find  Pytho  (which  is  the  same  as  Delphi)  mentioned 
in  the  Iliad  (ix.  405)  as  a  rich  temple  of  Apollo,  but  with  no 
mention  of  its  oracle ;  in  the  Odyssey  it  is  mentioned  as  an 
oracle.  Delphi  did  in  fact  displace  Dodona,  the  most  ancient 
and  venerable  of  oracles,  as  the  point  of  chief  approach  to  the 
Deity  for  all  the  races  inhabiting  the  land  which  we  now  name 
Greece  ;  but  Dodona  never  had  the  great  authority  of  Delphi. 
The  rise  of  Delphi  is  a  proof  that  Greece  was  feeling  after  unity 
in  spiritual  matters ;  an  effective  centre  was  needed ;  and  the 
neighbourhood  of  Delphi  to  the  Peloponnesus  (then  and  for  long 
afterwards  the  most  powerful  part  of  the  country  in  civil  govern- 
ment) made  its  position  advantageous.     Dodona  had  been  too 


VI]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  141 

far  off  for  general  consultation,  but  Delphi  was  easily  accessible, 
and  the  more  so,  because  the  rugged  nature  of  the  surrounding 
country  made  it  unavailable  for  the  abode  of  any  people  who 
should  be  politically  strong.  Moreover,  one  point  which  might 
have  been  regarded  as  advantageous  to  Dodona,  the  fact  that  its 
oracle  was  dedicated  to  the  supreme  God,  Zeus,  was  in  the  general 
Greek  feeling  no  advantage  against  Delphi,  which  was  dedicated 
to  Apollo.  For  Apollo  was  regarded  as  the  interpreter  of  Zeus  to 
men,  and  the  imaginative  Greek  mind  held  it  to  be  more  suitable 
for  the  supreme  Deity  to  issue  his  injunctions  to  men  through 
an  interpreter,  than  in  his  own  proper  person.  The  solemn,  awe- 
striking  look  of  Delphi,  with  its  precipices  and  its  chasm  under 
the  lofty  summit  of  Parnassus,  aided  in  enhancing  its  religious 
significance  ;  and  before  long  every  great  enterprise  among  the 
Greeks  was  held  to  require  the  sanction  of  the  Delphic  oracle 
before  it  could  be  launched  into  practical  working. 

But  at  this  point  I  must  go  back  and  pick  up  another  strand 
of  primaeval  Greek  history,  which  so  far  I  have  not  mentioned. 
I  may  best  do  this  by  asking,  as  a  preliminary,  two  questions : 

Was  the  beginning  of  unity  of  feeling  among  the  Greeks  solely 
due  to  the  valiant  exploits  of  the  Trojan  war,  and  the  brilHant 
poems  which  narrated  that  great  event  ? 

Was  the  supremacy  of  the  Delphic  oracle  solely  due  to  its 
central  position  and  to  the  natural  desire  of  all  Greeks  to  have 
one  ultimate  rehgious  guide  ? 

No,  these  were  not  the  sole  causes  ;  another  cause  joined  in 
producing  these  results,  and  that  was  the  Dorian  strength.  With- 
out the  Dorians,  the  feeling  of  unity  among  all  those  who  waged 
the  Trojan  war  would  never  have  expressed  itself  in  those  famous 
names — of  the  country,  Hellas  ;  and  of  the  people,  Hellenes. 
Without  the  Dorians  the  Hellenic  tongue  would  never  have  pre- 
vailed over  the  more  ancient  tongues,  its  rivals.  Without  the 
Dorians,  the  feeling  of  all  Greeks  for  religious  unity  would  never 
have  concentrated  itself  in  acknowledgment  of  the  Delphic 
oracle.  Lastly,  without  the  Dorians  the  Greek  race  would  never 
have  had  that  desire  for  unity  of  government  which,  though 
they  never  really  attained  such  unity,  was  so  valuable  to  the 
whole  race  as  an  inspiration.  It  was  the  strength  of  the  Dorians 
which  gave  to  the  entire  Greek  race  the  hard  kernel  of  persistency ; 
and  though  the  most  remarkable  Greek  qualities  lay  in  the  direc- 
tion of  sympathetic  expansion  and  not  of  persistent  strength, 
still  for  the  accomplishment  of  what  they  did  some  persistent 


142  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  [ch. 

strength    was    necessary ;     and    this    was   contributed    by   the 
Dorians. 

I  must  recount  the  history,  in  so  far  as  the  mists  of  antiquity 
permit  us  to  discern  it ;  and  the  best  way  of  approaching  it  will 
perhaps  be  by  quoting  that  single  passage  from  Homer  in  which 
the  Dorians  are  mentioned.  The  passage  is  in  the  Odyssey 
(xix.  175-179)  ;  it  occurs  in  the  description  of  the  population  of 
the  island  of  Crete  given  by  Ulysses  (then  in  disguise)  to  his  wife 
Penelope  : 

"  Their  tongue,"  he  says,  "  is  diverse,  of  diverse  races  ;  among  them 
axe  Achseans,  among  them  are  indigenous  Cretans  high-souled,  and  Cydones, 
and  Dorians  in  their  threefold  division,  and  Pelasgians  of  divine  origin. 
Among  their  cities  is  the  great  city  of  Cnosua,  and  there  Minos  reigned 
for  nine  years,  he  who  conversed  familiarly  with  great  Zeus." 

The  natural  inference  from  this  passage  is,  what  we  otherwise 
know  to  be  a  fact,  that  the  Dorians  were  colonists  in  Crete  and 
not  indigenous  ;  but  as  colonists  they  must  have  been  powerful, 
or  they  would  never  have  preserved  their  name  and  characteristics 
with  such  precision  in  foreign  territory.  "  Indigenous  Cretans  " 
and  "  Cydones  "  need  not  occupy  much  of  our  attention  here ; 
but  Achseans  and  Pelasgians  lived  side  by  side  with  Dorians  in 
the  mainland  of  Greece  as  well  as  in  Crete,  and  formed  parts  of 
that  community,  diverse  in  origin,  which  was  slowly  being  moulded 
into  the  Hellas  of  later  times.  Achaeans  and  Dorians  were  nearly 
related,  and  both  came  from  the  north  and  pressed  southwards  ; 
we  read  of  them  both  in  very  early  times  in  the  region  of 
Phthiotis,  south  of  Thessaly,  the  very  same  region  which  was  the 
home  of  the  great  warrior  Achilles;  it  is  Homer  who  tells  us 
that  Achaeans  occupied  this  tract,  it  is  Herodotus  who  places  the 
primitive  Dorians  there.  But  it  was  just  in  this  little  tract  that 
the  primitive  Hellenes  lived  ;  and  Homer  uses  language  which 
implies  so  near  a  relationship  between  Achaeans  and  Hellenes 
{Iliad,  II.  684)  as  to  suggest  that  the  Achseans  called  themselves 
Hellenes.  From  Herodotus  (i.  56)  we  may  infer  that  the  Dorians 
did  the  same.  It  would  seem  that  the  Achseans  had  pressed  down 
into  the  Peloponnesus  before  the  Trojan  war,  and  the  great  host 
under  the  command  of  Agamemnon  held  large  numbers  of  them  ; 
but  the  Dorians  still  remained  in  northern  Greece,  though  it  is 
likely  that,  even  before  the  Trojan  war,  they  had  penetrated  into 
the  region  round  Mount  Parnassus,  and  had  sent  colonies  to 
Crete,  and  to  other  islands  that  studded  the  sea  on  the  way  to 
Crete.     They  held  their  strength  in  reserve,  but  the  first  great 


VI]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  143 

evidence  of  it  lay  in  their  appropriation  of  the  oracle  of  Delphi 
for  their  patron-god,  ApoUo.  Delphi  had  long  been  an  oracular 
shrine,  but  it  had  been  tossed  about,  so  to  speak,  between  various 
deities,  and  as  long  as  this  was  the  case,  the  ancient  Pelasgian 
shrine  of  Dodona  preserved  its  supremacy.  But  the  Dorians  en- 
throned ApoUo  at  Delphi ;  Dodona  sank  to  the  second  place ; 
and  a  new  and  powerful  authority,  of  a  religious  kind,  began  to 
rule  over  Greece,  Dorians  from  Crete,  it  would  seem,  united 
with  Dorians  on  the  mainland  of  Greece  in  effecting  this  change i. 

Behold  then  the  Dorians  established  in  power,  though  hardly 
a  recognised  power;  but  one  immediate  result,  even  before  the 
Trojan  war,  may  be  discerned  in  their  effect  on  Athens  and 
Attica.  Herodotus  tells  us  that  the  Athenians  were  originally 
Pelasgians,  that  is,  that  they  belonged  to  the  aboriginal  inhabi- 
tants of  Greece,  who  had  never  migrated  (and  all  the  evidence 
is  to  this  effect) ;  but  that  the  natural  superiority  of  the  Hellenic 
language  caused  them  to  change  their  language  from  Pelasgic  to 
Hellenic.  We  cannot  but  recognise  some  probability  in  this 
account ;  and  when  should  the  change  take  place  but  when  the 
Dorians  had  established  the  worship  of  ApoUo  at  Delphi,  and 
thereby  made  the  Hellenic  tongue  prevalent  wherever  Delphi 
was  honoured  ?  What  now  took  place  in  Attica,  took  place 
presently  over  the  whole  Ionian  race,  to  which  the  Athenians 
belonged ;  for  the  Athenians  were  bound  by  intimate  ties  with  the 
lonians  of  Asia  Minor,  and  though  the  exact  origin  and  meaning 
of  the  "  Ionian  race  "  is  doubtful,  the  existence  of  the  Ionian  race 
is  of  course  not  to  be  questioned.  The  lonians,  though  Pelasgic 
in  origin,  ceased  to  be  Pelasgic  in  language,  and  became  Hellenic. 
(Herodotus  represents  the  Hellenic  race  as  a  branch  of  the  Pelasgic 
race ;  if  so,  the  languages  would  be  akin ;  this,  however,  cannot 
be  held  certain.) 

The  Hellenic  tongue  and  the  Doric  character  were  then 
beginning  to  win  prominence  in  Greece,  even  before  the  Trojan 
war.  But  after  the  fall  of  Troy,  the  dynasties  of  the  great  chief- 
tains who  had  carried  on  that  war  evinced  the  strain  to  which 
they  had  been  subjected ;    they  fell  into  comparative  weakness, 

^  For  the  evidence  that  the  Dorian  race  was  the  active  power  which  established 
Apollo  at  Delphi,  I  may  refer  to  the  well-known  and  learned  work  of  K.  O.  MiiUer 
on  The  History  of  the  Dorian  Race  ;  the  considerations  adduced  are  too  numerous 
and  too  subtle  to  be  transferred  to  the  present  work.  For  the  evidence  as  to  the 
influence  of  the  Achaeans  in  bringing  the  Hellenic  name  into  the  Peloponnesus,  I  must 
refer  to  an  article  by  J.  B.  Bury  in  the  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  vol.  xv.  part  ii. : 
being  the  volume  for  the  year  1895.  The  special  reason  suggested  by  Professor  Bury 
for  the  predominance  of  the  name  "Hellenes"  has  not  been  adopted  here,  but  is  not 
impossible. 


144  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  [CH. 

especially  did  the  dynasty  of  the  great  king  Agamemnon  slowly 
succumb  and  disappear.  The  Dorian  race,  who  had  long  waited 
at  the  doorstep  of  the  Peloponnesus,  seized  the  opportunity. 
Aided,  it  is  said,  by  the  survivors  of  an  ancient  Peloponnesian 
dynasty,  the  Herakleids,  they  entered  the  southern  peninsula, 
and  established  themselves  at  Sparta,  Messene,  and  Argos.  With 
that  successful  blow  the  Dorian  influence  became  supreme  all 
over  Greece  and  its  colonies  ;  and  Sparta,  the  chief  Dorian  city, 
was  looked  up  to  as  unquestionably  the  chief  of  Greek  cities. 
Moreover  monarchy,  in  its  old  form,  now  passed  away  from 
Greece,  for  the  Dorians,  without  entertaining  any  formal  objec- 
tion to  monarchy,  were  too  much  filled  with  the  pride  of  collective 
superiority  to  endure  a  despotism,  and  henceforth  there  was  no 
legitimate  monarchy  in  Greece.  Despots,  under  the  name  of 
tyrants,  were  not  indeed  uncommon  at  any  period,  but  the  uni- 
versal feeling  was  against  them,  and  no  despot  in  the  days  when 
Greece  was  vigorous  ever  succeeded  in  establishing  a  dynasty. 

The  abolition  of  monarchy  throughout  Greece  was  then  one 
consequence  of  the  Dorian  supremacy,  and  it  may  be  observed 
that  monarchy  passed  away  from  Ionian  and  ^olian  cities  quite 
as  much  as  from  Dorian  cities.  The  ^olian  race  was  indeed 
kindred  with  the  Dorians,  so  that  the  same  impulse  might  natur- 
ally affect  both  races ;  and  as  to  the  lonians,  their  subtle, 
flexible,  feminine  temperament  (Homer  calls  them  eX/ceYtTwi/a?, 
"  trailing  their  tunics  ")  would  easily  receive  impressions  from 
the  stronger  Dorian  mood,  which  more  and  more  ruled  Greece 
as  time  went  on.  The  strength  of  Athens  had  not  yet  been  born. 
With  all  this  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  Dorians  had  no  pro- 
fessed antipathy  to  kings  ;  Sparta,  the  chief  Dorian  city,  had 
two  kings  to  the  very  end  of  its  famous  history,  but  they  were 
kings  with  but  little  power  ;  the  Ephors  were  the  true  rulers  of 
Sparta.  Neither  were  the  Dorians  adverse  to  the  indigenous 
deities  worshipped  in  any  Greek  state  ;  but  they  insisted  that 
Apollo  should  be  worshipped  as  well  as  the  indigenous  deities, 
and  hence  we  have  at  Athens  temples  of  the  Pythian  Apollo  and 
of  the  Delphian  Apollo,  both  manifestly  set  up  under  Delphian 
influence  ;  and  the  same  is  doubtless  true  of  the  temple  of  the 
"  Paternal  "  Apollo.  The  Dorian  deity  became  the  Ionian 
deity,  whether  in  the  mainland  of  Greece,  or  in  the  islands  of 
the  Mgean,  or  on  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor  ;  though  Apollo  never 
displaced  the  goddess  Athena  (or  Athene)  from  the  first  place  in 
the  minds  of  the  faithful  Athenians. 


VI]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  145 

Let  me  now  recapitulate,  in  chronological  order,  the  three 
causes  which  made  of  Greece  one  nation ;  first,  the  great  effort 
of  the  Trojan  war,  under  Agamemnon  and  the  ancient  royal 
dynasties  in  feudal^  subjection  to  Agamemnon  ;  next,  the  Dorian 
advance  into  southern  Greece,  and  attainment  of  supremacy  over 
the  other  Greeks ;  and  thirdly,  the  great  power  and  brilliancy  of 
the  poetry,  especially  the  epic  poetry,  which,  two  or  three  cen- 
turies after  Troy  had  fallen,  was  everywhere  sung  in  celebration 
of  the  heroes  of  that  heroic  age.  It  was  the  Ionian  race  which 
produced  the  epic  poetry ;  and  it  is  evident  that  the  Ionian  race 
had  an  intrinsic  literary  and  artistic  power,  which  has  done 
more  for  the  permanent  fame  of  Greece  than  all  the  military 
skill  of  the  Dorians.  The  ^olian  race  had  likewise  its  famous 
poets,  of  whom  Sappho  and  Alcseus  are  the  best  known  ;  but  the 
Dorian  race  had  little  preeminence  in  this  way.  A  certain  nar- 
rowness characterises  the  Dorian  temperament,  and  the  Lycur- 
gean  legislation  at  Sparta  drew  some  of  its  strength  from  this 
narrowness,  but  it  proved  fatal  in  the  end  to  the  permanent 
supremacy  of  Spartans  over  Greece ;  they  never  renovated  their 
race  by  taking  new  blood  into  it.  Yet  when  this  narrowness  is 
allowed  for,  the  Spartans  had  great  qualities  of  faithfulness  and 
moderation,  at  any  rate  in  dealing  with  their  equals. 

Dorian,  ^Eolian,  Ionian  ;  under  these  names  we  recognise  the 
three  chief  motive  powers  of  rising  Greece,  during  the  seventh 
and  sixth  centuries  before  Christ.  AH  around  the  ^gean  sea, 
at  Cyrene  on  the  north  coast  of  Africa,  all  over  the  south  of  Italy, 
even  as  far  as  Marseilles  in  France,  the  Greek  colonies  grew,  and 
ever  attained  greater  splendour.  At  what  precise  period  the 
people  first  recognised  their  unity,  and  called  themselves  Hellenes, 
in  contradistinction  to  the  foreigner  of  strange  speech  outside 
them,  we  cannot  certainly  affirm.  But  we  can  see  and  wonder 
at  the  living  force  that  was  among  them  all.  At  so  ancient  an 
era  as  the  ninth  century  before  Christ,  it  would  appear  that 
there  were  games  held  at  Olympia  in  the  north  of  the  Peloponne- 
sus, under  religious  sanction  ;  and  though  it  is  not  likely  that 
the  competitors  were  drawn  from  so  extensive  an  area  as  was 
afterwards  the  case,  the  very  idea  of  such  a  festival  bears  wit- 
ness to  a  certain  peaceful  and  amicable  energy  than  which  nothing 
can  be  more  valuable.  We  have,  of  course,  to  remember  all  the 
drawbacks  of  that  state  of  society  ;  the  frequent  violences,  the 
sensualities,  the  tendency  more  and  more  to  thrust  women  into 

^  The  word  "  feudal  "  is  not  quite  exact  here,  but  is  not  far  from  the  truth.  - 
M.  D.  A.  10 


146  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  [ch. 

a  low  position,  the  existence  of  slaves  who  were  not  thought  to 
have  any  rights  of  their  own  ;  in  spite  of  all  this,  we  may  justly 
admire  the  growing  sense  of  a  common  Hellenic  feeling,  evinced 
in  a  common  religious  worship,  common  festivals,  common 
games  and  peaceful  contests,  a  common  deUght  in  poetry,  sculp- 
ture, architecture,  and  presently  in  dramatic  spectacles,  and  in 
the  art  of  painting  ;  also  in  exercises  of  the  intellect,  in  attempts 
to  understand  this  mysterious  world  in  which  we  live,  the  causes 
of  physical  changes  upon  earth,  the  true  nature  of  the  sun  and 
moon  and  stars.  No  nation  ever  rushed  so  speedily  into  such  a 
field  of  varied  and  genuinely  delightful  exercises,  bodily  and 
mental,  as  the  Greek  nation  between  the  years  700  and  500  B.C.; 
and  every  part  of  this  varied  exercise  was  placed  under  religious 
sanction,  and  it  was  beheved  that  the  Gods  approved  of  it  and 
took  dehght  in  it.  How  can  we  ourselves  fail  to  applaud  such  a 
conviction,  even  while  we  know  that  there  was  much  in  Greek 
society  which  was  alien  to  divine  love  and  mercy,  and  acknow- 
ledge that  the  Hebrew  prophet  who  sighed  and  wept  over  the 
misdoings  of  his  fellow-countrymen  came  nearer  to  the  centre  of 
moral  truth  than  the  Greek  poet  or  sculptor  or  athlete  who  re- 
joiced in  the  Hellenic  world  as  the  very  abode  of  light  ?  After 
all,  there  were  some  grave  and  serious  spirits  among  the  Greeks, 
who  did  not  ignore  the  lessons  of  sorrow,  and  who  preferred  the 
power  of  ruling  one's  own  soul  to  the  acquisition  of  any  amount 
of  external  happiness. 

That  the  Greeks  of  the  sixth  century  before  Christ  were  bound 
to  experience  sorrow,  and  were  almost  certain  to  experience 
defeat  in  one  quarter  or  another,  we  may  easily  see.  They  had 
fringed  the  greater  part  of  the  shores  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean 
with  their  cities  ;  here  and  there  (though  not  frequently)  pene- 
trating into  the  inland  countries.  Wherever  they  went,  other 
races  of  foreign  speech  (called  by  the  Greeks  "  barbarians  ")  had 
been  before  them,  and  war  was  the  natural  condition  between 
the  invading  Greeks  and  the  original  inhabitants  of  these  coun- 
tries. In  such  a  war,  the  Greeks  would  have  some  superiority 
as  long  as  they  were  within  easy  reach  of  the  coast-line,  but  not 
in  the  inland  parts,  where  they  would  be  comparatively  out  of 
reach  of  their  own  countrymen,  and  where  supplies,  in  case  of 
need,  would  not  easily  reach  them.  The  necessity  of  restricting 
their  colonies  to  the  near  neighbourhood  of  the  coast  was  then 
one  circumstance  which  hindered  the  expansion  of  the  Hellenic 
race  ;    and  another  circumstance  which  hindered  their  expansion 


VI]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  147 

was  the  difficulty  of  making  very  long  voyages,  in  consequence 
of  the  fear  which  men  without  maps  or  compasses  felt  of  aban- 
doning the  coast-line  and  committing  themselves  to  the  open  sea. 
It  followed,  that  when  the  Greeks  could  no  longer  expand  out- 
wards, they  were  driven  by  that  struggle  for  existence,  which  so 
often  tragically  hinders  human  progress,  to  contend  with  each 
other  for  ground  which  was  no  longer  adequate  to  an  expanding 
population.  This  dire  necessity  of  mutual  contention  was  held 
off  (as  far  as  our  information  permits  us  to  judge)  in  the  seventh 
century  before  Christ ;  even  in  the  sixth  century  it  was  not  very 
urgent ;  but  in  the  fifth  century,  after  the  Persian  wars,  it  became 
urgent,  and  it  was  sharpened  by  the  fact  that  whereas  in  the 
previous  centuries  there  had  been  only  one  leading  state,  Sparta, 
there  were  now  two  leading  states,  Sparta  and  Athens,  and  the 
vigorous  Athenian  character  was  not  disposed  to  exercise  that 
consideration  towards  subjects  or  towards  rivals  which  so 
dehcate  a  situation  demanded.  All  this  was  natural  enough  ; 
it  was  no  special  fault  of  the  Greeks  that  they  were  brought  face 
to  face  with  difficulties  which  are  deeply  implicated  in  the  whole 
nature  of  man,  and  in  his  position  as  a  living  creature  upon  the 
earth's  surface.  But  the  worth  of  a  race,  as  of  an  individual 
man,  is  tested  by  the  way  in  which  difficulties  are  met.  What 
are  we  to  say  of  the  way  in  which  the  Greeks  met  this  very  serious 
difficulty,  the  limitation  of  their  area  of  settlement  and  expansion  ? 

I  think  we  may  fairly  say  that  in  most  respects  the  Greeks 
were  better  fitted  to  meet  the  outside  world,  better  able  to  grapple 
with  those  difficulties  which  are  inherent  in  the  condition  of  man, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century  before  Christ,  than  they 
had  been  in  the  Homeric  age,  or  at  any  period  since  that  era. 
But  there  were  two  circumstances  of  their  condition  in  which 
there  had  been  no  advance,  but  retrogression  or  rigid  stationari- 
ness  ;  the  first  being  the  sexual  relations  prevalent  among  them  ; 
the  second,  the  political  type  of  the  then  leading  state,  Sparta. 
It  will  be  well  to  show  more  exactly  how  the  case  stood,  both  as 
regards  advance  and  as  regards  retrogression. 

The  advance  consisted  in  the  extraordinary  development  of 
sympathy  and  of  power  in  so  many  fields  of  which  I  have  already 
spoken  ;  in  the  intercourse  which  made  every  part  of  the  Hellenic 
world  responsive  to  every  other  part ;  in  the  penetrating  intellect 
which  so  many  philosophers,  Thales,  Pythagoras,  Anaximander, 
Anaximenes,  Heraclitus,  had  brought  to  bear  on  the  whole 
sphere  of  reality  ;    in  the  growing  conviction  that  the  world  was- 

10—2 


148  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  [ch. 

governed  by  the  Gods  under  moral  laws.  By  the  time  of  Pindar, 
at  the  very  close  of  the  period  of  which  I  speak,  the  superstitious 
and  extravagant  parts  of  the  Greek  mythology  were  beginning 
to  give  way,  as  we  may  see  from  the  first  Olympian  ode  of  that 
great  poet ;  and  yet  no  universal  destructive  scepticism  had  be- 
gun to  mingle  with  the  salutary  sense  that  the  Gods  must  not 
be  accredited  with  evil  passions.  The  way  of  truth  was  in  many 
respects  beginning  to  open  before  the  Greeks  ;  but  the  profound 
difficulty  which  lay  at  the  very  entrance  of  that  way  was  as  yet 
unsuspected  by  them.  Of  the  philosophers  of  this  era,  Pytha- 
goras and  Heraclitus  would  seem  to  have  been  the  nearest  to 
the  apprehension  of  that  true  solvent  of  all  human  problems, 
love  acting  through  self-denial ;  but  the  approach  even  of 
Pythagoras  and  Heraclitus  to  this  great  truth  was  very  im- 
perfect, although  it  is  of  course  right  to  add  that  we  know 
little  of  the  actual  lives  of  those  two  philosophers.  On  the 
whole,  the  Greeks  of  this  early  period  are  memorable  for  true 
instincts  in  a  stage  of  immature  development. 

After  saying  this,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  notice  those  parts 
of  the  Greek  character  which  were  retrograde  or  stationary.  Their 
retrogression  lay  chiefly  in  the  relation  between  the  sexes.  Of 
all  human  relations,  the  sexual  relations  are  the  most  subtle.  It 
appears  to  be  true,  that  not  only  men,  but  some  animals  and  a 
large  number  of  birds,  have  the  feeling  of  a  permanent  emotional 
relation  (which  we  may  rightly  call  spiritual)  as  the  counterpart 
of  that  physical  connexion  which  is  natural  between  the  sexes. 
It  is  unfortunate  that  the  animals  patronised  by  man,  whom  we 
regard  as  tame,  appear  to  lose  the  sense  of  this  spiritual  counter- 
part. I  speak  under  much  ignorance,  but  I  never  heard  of  a  dog 
having  a  bitch  for  its  permanent  mate.  But  I  believe  that  the 
lion  has  special  affection  for  its  mate,  the  lioness^  ;  the  male  for 
the  female  swallow.  The  development  of  this  spiritual  relation 
is  one  of  the  most  important  things  in  the  whole  world.  That 
there  are  many  obstacles  to  its  development,  every  one  is  aware ; 
and  the  Greeks,  whose  delicacy  of  perception  might  have  enabled 
them  to  foster  spiritual  attachment  between  man  and  woman, 
had  fallen,  at  some  period  after  the  Trojan  war,  into  serious 
error  in  respect  of  this  whole  subject.  We  do  not  know  the 
history  of  the  matter  ;    but  whereas  in  the  times  which  Homer 

■  We  must  distinguisli  botween  this  sptKiial  affection,  and  the  general  tenderness 
which  tlur  males  of  any  species  may  liave  for  the  females.  In  an  interesting  imagina- 
tive work,  White  Fang,  this  is  brought  out  strongly  as  a  characteristic  of  wolves  ; 
and  I  suppose  that  the  author  has  knowledge. 


VI]  ANCIENT   RELIGION:     GREECE  149 

describes,  and  probably  more  or  less  in  the  times  when  Homer 
sang,  women  appear  to  have  possessed  a  certain  freedom,  though 
subjected  to  the  violences  of  a  rude  age,  this  freedom  had  not 
remained  unimpaired  during  the  centuries  which  followed.  The 
woman,  indeed,  who  was  content  to  lead  a  licentious  life,  had 
still  great  chances  of  freedom,  for  no  man  had  a  peculiar  and  special 
interest  in  her ;  but  the  married  woman  was  placed  under  more 
rigid  control  than  had  formerly  been  customary.  The  married 
woman  was  looked  upon  more  and  more  as  the  possession,  less 
and  less  as  the  companion,  of  her  husband.  It  is  true  that  this 
change  did  not  take  place  in  Sparta  as  much  as  in  other  Greek 
cities ;  and  it  is  true  also  that,  in  every  Greek  city,  personal 
character  must  have  operated  more  or  less  in  modification  of 
the  general  rule.  The  noble  heroines  in  some  of  the  Greek 
tragedies,  such  as  Antigone  and  Alcestis,  could  hardly  have  been 
depicted  by  poets  who  had  not  known  brave  and  worthy  women 
in  actual  existence  ;  the  wife  of  Ischomachus,  of  whom  Xenophon 
teUs  us,  was  treated  with  courtesy  and  respect  by  her  husband  ; 
and  Xanthippe,  whatever  her  faults,  was  not  servile.  Still,  on 
the  whole,  during  the  time  of  which  I  am  speaking,  women  had 
become  subject  to  injurious  restriction,  and  this  had  actually 
come  through  the  advance  of  civilisation  ;  for  the  same  causes 
which  enabled  a  man  to  keep  his  property  more  securely,  enabled 
him  also  to  keep  his  wife  more  securely,  and  therefore  under 
greater  restraint.  The  liberty  of  men  did  not  imply  the  liberty 
of  women. 

A  condition  in  itself  unfortunate  was  made  worse  by  the 
practice  which  the  Greeks  adopted  as  a  remedy.  Spiritual 
union  between  husband  and  wife  had  been  lowered  in  its  char- 
acter ;  irregular  unions  between  man  and  woman  were  essentially 
unsatisfactory.  But  spiritual  union  between  man  and  man  was 
capable  of  great  intensity  ;  and  it  appeared  the  finest  flower  of 
happiness  to  combine  spiritual  affection  between  man  and  man 
with  something  like  that  physical  union  which  a  man  may  have 
with  a  woman.  The  practice  prevailed  not  among  the  Greeks 
alone  ;  but  we  must  more  regret  it  among  the  Greeks  than  in 
any  other  nation,  because  of  their  distinguished  qualities.  (The 
Spartans,  Xenophon  tells  us,  were  pure  in  this  respect.)  It  may 
seem  strange,  but  it  is  true,  that  a  practice  which  is  justly  con- 
demned as  weakening  to  body  and  soul,  and  which  is  regarded 
as  abominable  in  modern  times,  was  among  the  Greeks  not  in- 
capable of  being  combined  with  genuinely  lofty  feelings.     The 


160  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  [ch. 

evidence  does,  I  think,  warrant  us  in  saying  this;  but  it  was 
impossible  that  this  should  be  a  general  result  of  the  practice; 
and  it  did,  on  the  whole,  contribute  most  materiaUy  to  the  down- 
fall of  the  Greek  race.  Of  all  its  results,  the  degradation  of 
family  life  which  resulted  from  it  was  probably  the  worst. 
Though  it  is  true  that  the  relations  involved  in  family  life  are 
not  absolutely  the  deepest  which  the  human  mind  can  conceive, 
yet  there  is  no  external  relation  so  capable  of  administering  to  the 
deepest  and  most  enduring  phases  of  sentiment  as  family  life  ;  to 
corrupt  the  family  tie  means  the  endangering  of  the  welfare  of 
the  entire  community.  Even  the  greatest  Greek  philosophers, 
though  they  did  condemn  that  harmful  practice  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  hardly  perceived  how  great  a  reform  was  needed  in  this 
part  of  the  Greek  mind.  Did  we  desire  to  see  how  far  wrong  a 
very  great  philosopher  is  capable  of  going,  when  he  treats  of  the 
relations  between  the  sexes,  the  fifth  book  of  Plato's  RepvJ}lic 
would  give  us  ample  evidence.  Yet,  it  should  be  added,  that 
Plato  spoke  much  more  soundly  on  the  subject  of  marriage  in 
his  last  treatise,  the  Laws,  than  in  the  Republic ;  and  everywhere 
the  duty  of  restraining  intemperate  desires  is  very  seriously  felt 
by  him  (as  by  his  master,  Socrates,  and  by  his  pupil,  Aristotle). 
But  a  more  vivid  energy  in  dealing  with  the  faults  of  the  Greeks 
was  needed  than  any  philosopher  among  them  put  into  play. 

To  return  to  the  sixth  century  before  Christ.  The  Greek 
character  of  that  time,  though  in  some  ways  noble  and  pro- 
gressive, was  retrograde  in  the  way  just  mentioned.  To  this 
most  serious  disadvantage  another  disadvantage  must  be  added  ; 
namely  that  Sparta,  the  unquestioned  chief  at  that  time  of 
Hellenic  peoples,  was  so  rigidly  conservative  as  to  debar  all 
political  progress  in  that  quarter.  Whence  it  followed  that  the 
remaining  Hellenic  states  were  greatly  hampered  in  their  political 
progress  also  ;  for  the  example  of  Sparta,  and  the  prejudices  of 
Sparta,  were  exceedingly  powerful.  There  was  much  that  was 
truly  worthy  of  admiration  in  Sparta  throughout  her  whole 
history,  but  the  world  has  hardly  ever  seen  such  an  example  of 
the  evil  wrought  by  mere  conservatism  ;  for  if  the  ruling  tribe 
of  Spartans  had  once  consented  to  share  their  power  with  the 
countryfolk  of  Laconia,  as  the  Roman  patricians  consented  to 
share  theirs  with  the  Roman  plebeians,  the  whole  course  of  Greek 
history  would  have  been  altered,  and  the  internal  quarrels  of 
other  Greek  states  would  have  been  greatly  mitigated.  It  is 
impossible  not  to  add  that  the  Spartan  authorities  are  accused 


VI]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  161 

of  fortifying  their  own  oligarchic  rule  by  acts  of  secret  treachery 
and  murder  ;  we  must  in  part  credit  this  (see  an  instance  recorded 
in  the  80th  chapter  of  the  fourth  book  of  Thucydides);  and  con- 
sidering the  eminence  of  Sparta,  few  things  can  have  contributed 
more  to  the  downfall  of  Greek  virtue  and  of  Greek  power. 

There  is  nothing  which  so  forcibly  brings  before  the  mind  the 
fact  that  man  has  a  sinful  nature,  resulting  in  actual  sins  and 
actual  degeneration  (if  it  be  not  checked),  as  such  examples  as 
those  which  I  have  just  given  of  ill-doing  on  the  part  of  men 
who  reaUy  desired  to  progress  in  excellence  and  virtue,  who  in 
many  respects  deserve  our  admiration,  and  who  yet  in  their 
ignorant  cupidity  clutched  at  methods  and  practices  which  could 
only  bring  destruction  with  them.  It  is  among  such  difficulties 
as  these  that  mankind  are  placed  ;  we  cannot  altogether  refuse 
to  follow  our  natural  impulses,  and  yet  danger  is  intricately  in- 
woven in  them.  Of  all  parts  of  human  history,  Greek  history 
is  that  which  is  most  filled  with  examples  of  the  frailty  which 
accompanies  human  activity. 

The  reUgious  minds  among  the  Greeks  were  not  unaware  of 
this  danger  to  their  race,  and  they  strove  to  introduce  correctives 
of  it.  The  Greek  conscience  was  not  so  sensitive  of  sin  as  the 
Hebrew  conscience,  but  it  was  not  insensitive.  In  Homer,  we 
find  the  singular  combination  of  a  sensitiveness  to  sin  with  an 
assumption  that  the  sinful  impulse  cannot  be  resisted ;  this 
double  feeling  is  called  Ate  (infatuation) ;  thus  Helen  admits 
without  a  blush  her  own  wrong-doing  in  eloping  with  Paris,  but 
evidently  thinks  that  she  could  not  have  helped  committing  the 
sin,  and  Menelaus  her  husband,  having  recovered  her,  seems  to 
acquiesce  in  this  view.  But  by  the  sixth  century  before  Christ 
a  desire  for  purity  had  entered  the  Greek  mind,  a  sense  that  "  we 
must  strive  even  now  to  realise  our  affinity  with  God^,"  which 
must  be  accounted  a  real  advance  on  the  lines  of  duty.  It  was  in 
the  Orphic  religious  societies,  with  their  mystical  ceremonies  and 
their  teaching  as  to  the  destiny  of  the  soul,  that  this  movement 
began  ;  a  movement  which  ran  into  many  extravagances  and 
was  liable  to  be  darkened  by  imposture,  but  which  had  true 
value  at  the  core.  That  the  great  poet  Pindar  belonged  to  one 
of  the  Orphic  communities,  we  have  no  reason  to  say  ;  but  in 
the  second  of  his  Olympian  odes,  he  declares  the  happiness  of 
the  virtuous  after  death  in  famous  and  beautiful  lines  ;    and 

^  I  quote  this  expression  from  the  work  on  The  Religious  Teachers  of  Greece,  by 
James  Adam. 


162  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  [oh. 

after  death,  also,  shall  evil-doers  (he  says)  receive  punishment  for 
their  misdeeds  ;  and  such  teaching  as  this  was  no  doubt  a  part 
of  that  instruction  which  was  given  by  the  Orphic  communities, 
as  well  as  in  the  Eleusinian  mysteries.  Even  as  expressed  by 
Pindar,  we  have  to  recognise  something  of  the  superfluities  of 
fancy  in  his  description  ;  but  his  seriousness,  and  his  individual 
conviction  of  the  essential  truth  of  what  he  says,  are  not  to  be 
doubted.  We  must  not  disparage  such  teaching,  imperfect 
though  it  necessarily  was  ;  and  the  Pythagorean  brotherhoods, 
which  had  their  start  in  the  sixth  century,  were  another  evidence 
of  something  that  was  felt  to  be  needed  on  the  lines  of  religious 
duty. 

Whatever  her  drawbacks,  Greece  in  the  sixth  century  before 
Christ  was  teeming  with  ardour  ;  and  I  need  not  tell  my  reader 
that  that  ardour  did  not  come  to  an  end  with  the  sixth  century. 
When  we  think  of  Greece,  it  is  of  Greece  in  the  fifth  and  fourth 
centuries  before  Christ  that  we  chiefly  think ;  and  when  we  think 
of  the  leading  state  of  Greece,  it  is  not  of  Sparta  that  we  think, 
but  of  another  state.  The  career  of  Athens  and  of  the  Athenian 
people  was  a  mighty  explosion  of  human  genius  ;  too  violent  to 
last,  and  mingled  with  so  many  crimes  and  follies  as  greatly  to 
dim  and  chequer  the  liking  and  affection  which  the  name  of 
Athens  at  first  arouses  in  us  ;  but  in  the  end  we  must  confess 
that  hardly  any  part  of  the  world's  history  is  so  interesting  and  so 
pathetic  as  the  two  centuries  of  which  I  have  spoken,  and  the 
little  country  of  Attica  as  the  central  point  of  their  interest  and 
pathos.  In  ancient  times,  only  the  narrow  thread  of  Uving  gold, 
which  runs  through  the  history  of  Israel,  surpasses  Attica  in  the 
ways  I  have  named. 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  bold  political  reform  of  Solon 
was  the  beginning  of  the  power  of  Athens.  It  was  really  Solon, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  sixth  century  before  Christ,  who  made 
Athens  a  democracy  ;  not  so  much  by  his  political  constitution, 
as  by  his  law  which  at  one  stroke  abolished  all  debts.  So  won- 
derful a  law  was  perhaps  never  conceived  by  the  human  brain, 
or  carried  out  by  the  human  will.  But  it  was  done  ;  and  wonder- 
ful to  relate,  it  succeeded.  It  was  conceivable  that  it  might  have 
multiplied  the  quarrels,  the  intestine  wars,  of  the  Athenian  people 
tenfold  ;  only  happily  it  did  not  do  so.  It  would  be  too  much, 
indeed,  to  say  that  it  gave  peace  to  Athens  ;  but  it  gave  life 
and  spirit  to  the  poorest  citizen,  and  it  was  accepted  with  ac- 
quiescence.    We  can  only  conclude  that  Solon,  with  the  eye  of 


VI]  ANCIENT   RELIGION:     GREECE  163 

genius,  saw  what  his  city  needed.  As  to  the  constitution  which 
Solon  gave  the  Athenians,  it  was  good  as  a  type,  as  a  promise, 
as  an  ideal  for  the  future ;  but  the  Athenians  were  not  as  yet 
strong  enough  to  work  it.  It  was  not  long  afterwards  (before 
Solon's  death,  it  would  appear)  that  they  fell  under  the  power  of 
one  of  those  plausible  despots,  who  often  acquired  the  govern- 
ment over  Greek  cities,  and  who  often  deserved  some  respect. 
Peisistratus  was  the  despot  in  this  case, .  and  his  sons,  Hippias 
and  Hipparchus,  succeeded  him  peaceably  in  the  government ; 
nor  does  it  appear  that  they  were  bad  rulers,  at  least  naturally. 
But  circumstance,  as  well  as  natural  disposition,  has  a  power  in 
the  way  of  influencing  rulers,  so  as  to  make  them  good  or  bad  in 
their  rule ;  and  so  it  proved  in  this  case.  Hipparchus  was  slain 
in  a  private  quarrel,  and  from  that  moment  Hippias  became 
severe  and  suspicious.  The  Athenians,  remembering  the  promise 
of  freedom  which  had  come  to  them  from  Solon's  legislation, 
chafed  under  the  yoke,  and  at  last  the  way  to  deliverance  was 
found. 

It  so  happened  that  the  temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi  had  been 
burnt  down — this  had  happened  before  the  death  of  Hipparchus  ; 
and  now  one  of  the  wealthy  Athenian  families,  the  Alcmseonids,  who 
being  opponents  of  Peisistratus  and  his  sons  had  been  banished 
from  Athens,  offered  their  services  in  rebuilding  the  temple.  The 
contract  was  at  first  one  simply  of  a  business  nature  ;  but  the 
Alcmaeonids  performed  their  part  with  such  splendour  as  to 
merit  real  gratitude  from  the  people  of  Delphi  and  from  the 
Amphictyons  (the  board  of  governors,  as  in  modern  phrase  we 
should  style  them,  in  charge  of  the  temple).  Cleisthenes,  the 
head  of  the  Alcmseonid  family,  acquired  in  this  manner  great 
influence  at  Delphi ;  and  that  influence  was  presently  exercised 
in  a  way  which  was,  at  any  rate,  natural.  Athens,  and  the 
oppressed  inhabitants  of  Athens,  became  suddenly  dear  to 
Delphi ;  and  the  Spartans,  who  were  not  only  the  most  powerful 
people  in  Greece,  but  also  the  most  conspicuous  in  their  obedience 
to  the  Delphic  oracle,  presently  found  that  on  all  occasions  when 
they  consulted  the  oracle,  they  received  but  one  answer  :  "  they 
must  set  Athens  free."  It  was  an  injunction  by  no  means  agree- 
able to  Sparta,  for  the  Spartans  had  been  on  friendly  terms  with 
Peisistratus,  and  had  continued  their  friendship  with  his  sons, 
and  they  ignored  the  bidding  of  Apollo  as  long  as  they  dared  do 
so.  But  after  a  time  they  found  they  had  to  face  the  situation, 
and   they  obeyed  the   oracle.       Their  first    expedition  for  the 


164  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  [oh: 

deliverance  of  the  Athenians  was  not  successful ;  for  Hippias  had 
managed  to  secure  the  assistance  of  a  body  of  Thessalian  cavalry, 
who  repelled  the  Spartans.  But  a  second  and  more  powerful 
expedition  proved  effective.  Hippias  had  to  retire  from  Athens 
to  Asia  Minor ;  he  was  strong  enough  to  be  able  to  secure  a 
peaceable  departure  for  himself,  though  some  of  his  adherents 
afterwards  felt  the  vengeance  of  the  Athenians  ;  and  Athens  was 
free.  This  great  crisis  of  Athenian  history  was  reached  in  the 
year  510  B.C.,  the  same  year  (if  we  may  trust  the  ordinary 
reckoning)  in  which  the  Romans  cast  off  their  kings  and  became 
a  repubhc. 

"  Then,"  says  Herodotus,  "  it  was  seen  that  liberty  is  an 
excellent  thing  for  a  nation."  Herodotus  was  right  as  regards 
those  cases  in  which  the  nation  has  real  force  ;  and  Athens  had 
real  force,  and  was  resolved  to  use  it.  Cleisthenes,  who  until 
then  had  been  an  aristocrat,  joined  the  rising  tide  of  democracy, 
and  framed  for  the  Athenians  a  truly  democratic  constitution  ; 
and  this  time  the  Athenians  were  resolved  that  their  constitution 
should  not  be  filched  away  from  them,  as  the  Solonian  consti- 
tution had  been.  They  stretched  out  arms  of  strength,  and  made 
themselves  felt,  outside  the  boundaries  of  Attica,  by  Bceotians 
and  other  surrounding  peoples  ;  and  made  even  the  Spartans, 
half  repentant  of  their  aid  already  given  to  Athens,  hold  them 
in  respect.  But  it  was  not  in  such  petty  conflicts  as  these  that 
Athens  was  to  win  a  world-wide  fame.  The  conflict  with  Persia 
was  looming  ahead. 

Yet  it  was  very  far  from  being  a  premeditated  design  of  the 
Athenian  people,  or  even  of  their  most  clear-sighted  statesmen, 
to  challenge  the  mighty  empire  of  Persia  to  a  duel.  It  is  true 
that  the  Athenians  probably  underrated  the  power  of  Persia  ; 
their  immediate  feeUng,  when  Sparta  began  to  threaten  them, 
was  that  Persia  might  perhaps  be  a  useful  ally  against  Sparta, 
and  they  actually  made  proposals  to  the  Persians  to  this  effect. 
The  Persian  satrap,  who  received  these  overtures  with  profound 
astonishment,  expressed  his  contempt  in  an  appropriate  manner, 
and  the  first  flame  of  indignation  against  the  Persians  was  kind- 
led in  the  Athenian  breast.  It  so  happened  that  the  lonians, 
kindred  to  the  Athenians,  who  were  Hving  in  their  flourishing 
cities  on  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  were  subject  to  the  Persians  ; 
it  was  the  only  part  of  the  world  where  Greek  communities 
obeyed  a  non-Hellenic  master,  and  they  obeyed  very  reluctantly, 
remembering  an  independence  which  had  been  torn  from  them 


VI]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  165 

in  days  well  within  the  memory  of  their  old  men.  About  ten 
years  after  the  expulsion  of  Hippias  from  Athens,  these  lonians 
rebelled  ;  and  they  asked  help  first  from  the  Spartans,  who 
refused  it,  and  next  from  the  Athenians,  who  granted  it.  A 
force  of  lonians  and  Athenians  united  in  a  march  up  to  the  great 
city  of  Sardis,  in  the  centre  of  Asia  Minor,  and  as  the  houses  of 
the  city  were  generally  either  built  of  wickerwork  or  thatched 
with  reed,  it  was  easy  to  apply  fire  to  them,  and  the  city  was  set 
on  fire  and  almost  destroyed.  But  Persian  armies  were  near  at 
hand,  and  lonians  and  Athenians,  having  done  this  feat,  fled 
back  precipitately.  Probably  the  Athenians  could  give  no  solid 
help  against  so  powerful  a  foe,  who  had  a  natural  command  of 
the  country  ;  at  any  rate  they  made  no  further  attempt  in  this 
direction.  The  poor  luckless  lonians  were  overwhelmed  and 
severely  punished ;  and  then  Darius,  the  great  and  famous 
Persian  king,  of  whose  character  and  exploits  I  spoke  in  a 
previous  chapter,  ruler  of  all  the  lands  between  India  and  the 
Mediterranean  sea,  asked  the  question  :  "  But  who  are  the 
Athenians?"  It  was  explained  to  him  who  they  were;  and 
then  he  gave  directions  that  the  Athenians  should  be  subjugated 
and  punished,  even  as  had  been  done  to  the  lonians. 

It  must  be  a  matter  of  wonder  to  us,  even  at  the  present 
day,  why  the  Persians  could  not  accomplish  that  conquest  which 
Darius  so  lightly  commanded,  and  which,  after  his  failure,  was 
essayed  by  his  son  Xerxes  with  such  extraordinary  accumulation 
of  efforts.  The  battles  of  Marathon,  Thermopylae,  Salamis,  and 
Platsea,  stand  on  the  pages  of  history  as  the  evidences  of  the 
Persian  failure  ;  and  the  valour  of  the  Greeks  in  those  battles  is 
not  for  a  moment  to  be  denied  ;  but  we  have  no  reason  at  all  to 
say  that  the  Persians  were  cowards.  Nevertheless,  when  the 
slow  but  exceedingly  valiant  Spartans  united  in  one  cause  with 
the  swift,  ardent  and  dexterous  Athenians,  and  when  both  were 
supported  by  a  fair  number  of  the  other  Greek  states,  and  when 
every  state  that  joined  the  cause  sent  out  all  its  forces,  the  com- 
bination was  a  strong  one.  Yet  it  is  not  always  appreciated  by 
the  reader  of  history  how  very  nearly  the  Greeks  came  to  being 
defeated  ;  how  unstable  was  their  equilibrium  ;  how  narrow  was 
the  verge  within  which  it  was  possible  for  them  to  act  in  effective 
union.  Salamis  was  the  critical  battle  ;  and  it  is  very  likely 
true  that,  if  the  battle  of  Salamis  had  been  put  off  for  a  week, 
the  Greek  fleet  would  have  dissolved  of  itself,  and  all  Greece 
would  have  fallen  a  prey  to  Persia.     It  was  under  not  very 


166  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  [ch. 

dissimilar  circumstances  that  the  Ionian  fleet  had  been  defeated  ; 
for  the  lonians  also  had  been  subject  to  internal  dissensions,  and 
the  ruin  of  their  cause  had  been  brought  about  by  looseness  of 
fibre  from  within  quite  as  much  as  by  the  hosts  of  the  Persians 
from  without.  Happily,  when  the  Greek  fleets  were  assembled 
at  Salamis,  their  coherence,  though  imperilled,  remained  unbroken; 
the  battle  in  fact  was  forced  by  the  Persian  attack,  and  when 
that  had  once  begun  there  was  no  thought  of  disunion  among  the 
Greeks.  We  are  told  by  Herodotus  that  the  Persian  attack  was 
hastened  by  the  subtlety  of  Themistocles,  the  Athenian  com- 
mander, who,  having  the  evidence  before  his  eyes  of  the  immin- 
ence of  the  Greek  danger  through  the  mutual  disunion  of  the 
different  states,  conveyed  a  secret  message  to  Xerxes,  represent- 
ing himself  as  a  well-wisher  to  the  Persians,  and  informing  him 
that  now  was  the  time  to  crush  the  whole  Greek  force  at  once. 
Xerxes  feU  into  the  trap,  and  made  the  attack  which  proved  the 
ruin  of  the  Persians.  Themistocles  has  had  rather  an  .ambiguous 
reputation  in  after  ages,  owing  to  the  suspicion  of  double-dealing 
and  selfishness  which  has  attached  to  him  ;  but  it  is  undeniable 
that  his  counsels  saved  Athens,  and  that  in  saving  Athens  he 
saved  Greece.  The  singular  wisdom  and  boldness  of  the  course 
of  which  he  was  the  true  author,  and  to  which  he  persuaded  the 
Athenians,  namely,  to  disregard  the  safety  of  their  material  city 
and  take  refuge  in  their  ships,  transporting  their  wives  and 
families  to  the  island  of  ^Egina,  has  not  always  been  appreciated 
as  it  deserves.  This  advice  came  nominally  from  the  Delphic 
oracle,  and  those  who  look  at  the  account  in  Herodotus  (vii. 
140-144)  will  see  that  the  oracle  was  not  without  some  credit  in 
the  matter  ;  the  terms  in  which  the  oracle  conveyed  its  advice, 
that  the  Athenians  were  to  trust  to  their  "  wooden  walls,"  are 
famous.  It  is  permissible  to  believe  that  Themistocles,  as  he 
certainly  interpreted  this  oracle  in  the  sense  which  proved  salu- 
tary, so  also  suggested  in  some  manner  the  purport  of  it  ;  though 
no  doubt  the  prophetic  (and  ambiguous)  form  came  from  Delphi. 
Herodotus  also  tells  us  that  it  was  Themistocles  who  persuaded  the 
Athenians  to  build  their  fleet  in  the  first  instance  (this  was  anterior 
to  the  Persian  wars);  a  memorable  counsel,  as  if  the  fleet  had 
not  been  built,  Athens,  and  Greece  too,  would  assuredly  have 
gone  under  in  the  critical  hour  !  Of  all  Greek  statesmen  of  any 
age,  with  the  single  exception  of  Solon,  Themistocles  appears  to 
me  the  greatest  ;  though  his  rival  and  comrade,  Aristides,  may 
have    been    more    blameless,    and    Pericles    was   certainly    more 


VI]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  157 

magnificent.     Miltiades,  the  Athenian  commander  at  Marathon, 

\'-  was  another  to  whom  an  incalculable  debt  was  owing.     Leonidas, 

j  the  Spartan  king,  who  fell  at  Thermopylae,  ought  not  to  be  un- 

I  named  in  any  mention  of  these  events  ;   but  he  was  scarcely  the 

equal  of  the  great  Athenians. 

The  Persian  war  was  over ;    Greece  was  saved ;    but  Greece 
was  now   essentially  a  duality,  not  a  unity.      The  energy  of 
Athens  had  been  so  conspicuous  during  the  war,  the  wisdom 
and  moderation  of  her  statesmen  had  been  so  great,  that  her 
leadership  was  felt  all  over  Greece  to  be  a  rival  to  the  leader- 
ship of  Sparta  ;   and  if  Sparta  was  still  held  to  be  superior  in  land 
warfare,   Athens  plainly  took  the  lead  at  sea.     Hence  almost 
immediately  the  islands  of  the  ^gean,  with  insignificant  excep- 
tions, became  nominally  the  allies,  really  the  subjects,  of  Athens. 
]  The  splendid  age  of  Pericles  ensued  ;  an  age  of  oratory  and  poetry, 
jil  of  architecture  and  sculpture,  of  citizen  life  and  philosophic  thought, 
i\  such  as  the  world  had  never  seen  before.     Athens — and  not  only 
Athens,  but  Greece — was  at  its  acme  of  power  and  splendour. 

Alas  !  such  splendour  is  but  a  flower  ;  and  it  became  very 
soon  manifest  that  no  genuine  root  of  permanent  progressive 
life,  operative  in  politics  and  society  generally,  existed  either  in 
Athens  or  in  Sparta,  or  anywhere  in  Greece.  Athens  and  Sparta, 
under  the  pressure  of  that  inevitable  question,  "  Which  is  the 
greater  ?  "  glided  slowly  into  war.  I  need  not  recapitulate  here 
that  tragic  history  ;  but  let  me  record  the  single  gleam  of  light 
at  its  close,  which  saved  mankind  from  the  occurrence  of  a  still 
greater  and  irremediable  tragedy.  Athens,  after  incredible  exer- 
tions, and,  it  must  be  admitted,  also  after  incredible  acts  of  folly, 
had  fallen  ;  the  subtle  Spartan  general,  Lysander,  had  caught 
her  in  his  net ;  the  beautiful  city,  that  had  almost  attained 
imperial  rule,  surrendered  perforce  to  her  enemies.  What  would 
those  enemies  do  with  her  ?  Often  and  often,  in  the  previous 
history  of  mankind,  and  in  the  subsequent  history  too,  did  such 
f  enemies  destroy  the  object  of  their  hate  utterly.  Thus  had 
Nineveh  been  destroyed,  and  thus  had  Sybaris  been  destroyed, 
'  and  thus  had  Jerusalem  been  destroyed  (for  the  renascence  of 
',  Jerusalem  after  its  destruction  by  Nebuchadnezzar  was  wholly 
unforeseen  and  wholly  unlikely  by  any  ordinary  standard  of 
probability).  Would  not  Athens  be  destroyed  in  accordance 
with  those  lamentable  precedents  ?  So  the  Thebans  desired,  and 
the  Corinthians  ;  but  Sparta  had  the  supreme  voice  in  the  matter, 
/    and  the  Spartans  nobly  replied  that  they  would  never  consent  to 


158  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  [oh. 

the  destruction  of  a  city  which  had  done  such  services  to  Greece 
as  Athens  had  done  in  the  Persian  war. 

By  this  reply  of  the  Spartans,  the  mind  of  Greece,  the  genius 
of  Greece,  the  noble  works  of  Greece  in  literature  and  art,  were 
saved  for  all  future  generations  of  mankind.  For  would  any- 
thing of  them  have  been  saved,  if  Athens  had  then  been  de- 
stroyed ?     It  is  not  likely. 

Greece,  in  its  true  spiritual  element,  survived  and  survives 
still ;  but  the  material  power  of  Greece  was  even  then  on  the 
way  to  extinction.  Sparta  was  suffering  (as  Aristotle  tells  us) 
from  "  fewness  of  men  "  ;  the  ruling  Spartan  race  had  not  been 
replenished  from  outside,  and  the  "  polyandry  "  (the  converse 
of  polygamy)  which  was  unfortunately  prevalent  there,  also 
tended  to  lessen  the  number  of  the  population.  Hence  the 
unquestioned  Spartan  supremacy  over  Greece,  after  Lysander's 
victory,  was  shortlived  ;  thirty-three  years,  or  a  single  genera- 
tion, was  the  measure  of  it.  Then  Thebes,  under  the  heroic 
Epaminondas,  became  for  nine  years  the  leading  Greek  state ;  but 
when  Epaminondas  was  slain  in  the  battle  of  Mantinea,  in  the 
year  362  B.C.,  Greece  had  no  longer  within  its  bounds  any  state 
or  city  of  which  it  could  be  said,  "  Herein  lies  guidance."  Xeno- 
phon,  in  the  impressive  close  of  his  history,  the  Hellenica,  notes 
and  laments  the  fact  that,  after  such  arduous  struggles,  there 
was  not  anywhere  any  true  chieftainship  over  the  Hellenic  race, 
which  had  been  so  long  expecting  a  chief. 

The  issue  came  in  a  manner  that  neither  Xenophon  nor  any 
of  his  contemporaries  had  expected.  Philip  of  Macedon,  the 
strong,  subtle  despot,  ruling  over  a  people  only  half  Hellenic, 
hung  over  Greece  from  the  north  ;  and  he  employed  his  intellec- 
tual power  in  gathering  together  and  drilling  an  army  such  as 
no  mere  citizen  army  could  withstand  ;  and  as  he  was  bent  on 
conquest  alone,  and  the  Greeks  (and  above  all  the  Athenians) 
were  interested  in  many  things,  it  was  not  wonderful  that  Philip, 
when  at  last  he  swooped  down,  conquered  the  Greeks.  The 
great  orator  Demosthenes  in  vain  tried  to  animate  his  country- 
men with  force  to  contend  against  their  mighty  antagonist. 
Philip  was  assassinated  shortly  after  he  had  won  his  great  victory 
— that  dishonest  victory  at  Chaeronea,  fatal  to  liberty,  as  Milton 
calls  it  ;  but  a  mightier  than  Philip  succeeded  to  the  throne. 
Alexander  had  had  the  instruction  of  Aristotle  ;  he  accounted 
himself  not  merely  a  Greek,  but  as  the  typical  Greek,  destined 
to  avenge  the  ancient  wrongs  of  Greece  upon  the  old  enemy 


VI]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:     GREECE  159 

of  Greece,  Persia.  I  need  but  remind  the  reader  of  the  well- 
known  story ;  how  Alexander,  after  annihilating  Thebes  (the 
only  Greek  city  which  had  ventured  to  rebel  against  the  Mace- 
donians) led  his  army  (moderate  in  size  but  perfectly  disciplined) 
!  into  the  heart  of  Asia  ;  how  he  overthrew  the  Persian  army  and 
j  everywhere  replaced  Persian  rule  by  Greek  rule  ;  how  under  his 
'  overwhelming  onset  the  famous  religion  which  called  itself  by 
'  the  name  of  Zoroaster  vanished  into  corners  and  was  lost  for  a 
time  to  the  sight  of  men  ;  how  he  implanted  Greek  settlers  all 
over  western  Asia  and  Egypt,  and  made  Greek  language  and 
learning  dominant  over  those  vast  tracts  ;  how,  having  effected 
a  work  which  in  its  external  aspect  was  one  of  the  greatest  that 
any  man  ever  did,  he  died  at  the  early  age  of  thirty-two,  of  a 
fever,  at  Babylon.  The  one  Greek  achievement  which  Alexander 
was  unable  to  renew,  create,  or  transplant  into  any  single  spot  of 
his  vast  empire,  was  the  Greek  political  liberty.  This  the  Greeks 
had  lost ;  deservedly  we  must  own  ;  and  few  of  the  warlike 
despots  who  followed  Alexander  as  his  successors  have  any 
claim  to  our  attention  as  part  of  the  divine  legacy  of  Greece  to 
mankind. 

But  the  spiritual  force  which  mankind  owe  to  Greece  was 
openly  active  among  mankind  for  many  centuries  after  Alexan- 
der ;  and  though  lost  to  view  in  that  strange  twilight  of  thought 
which  we  call  the  mediaeval  period,  has  been  revived  in  modern 
times,  and  influences  us  still.  To  this  then  I  must  now  recur. 
But  the  theme  is  so  great  as  to  deserve  a  chapter  to  itself,  and  the 
present  chapter,  which  has  given  as  it  were  the  framework  of 
the  subject,  may  well  terminate  here. 


CHAPTER   VII 

ANCIENT   RELIGION  :   THE   HELLENIC    QUEST   AFTER   TRUTH 

It  is  of  the  religion  of  Greece,  as  it  emerged  out  of  mere 
naive  mythology  into  its  final  development,  that  this  chapter 
must  treat ;  and  I  will  begin  by  speaking  of  the  Delphic  oracle. 
How  far  that  oracle,  the  most  marked  centre  of  Greek  religion, 
was  animated  by  true  sentiment  and  real  uplifting  of  the  heart 
from  man  to  God,  is  hardly  possible  for  us  now  to  tell.  That 
it  had  its  delusive  side,  in  which  it  made  use  of  verbal  quibbles, 
we  know ;  that  it  had  its  worldly-wise  side,  and  its  secret  sources 
of  information,  is  probable ;  and  when  Greece  was  invaded  by 
sceptical  philosophy,  about  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century  before 
Christ,  the  oracle  began  slowly  to  lose  its  commanding  reputation. 
Yet  out  of  the  midst  of  that  very  scepticism  a  hand  was  reached 
out,  which  did  to  a  certain  extent  preserve  the  honour  of  the 
oracle. 

The  event  of  which  I  am  about  to  speak  happened,  as  we 
cannot  doubt,  before  the  Peloponnesian  war  began ;  and  it  may 
justly  be  said  that  the  Delphic  oracle,  before  it  fell,  bequeathed 
its  authority  to  a  new  order  of  things,  and  pointed  the  way  to 
a  type  of  character,  and  to  a  method  of  religious  inquiry,  which 
could  not  possibly  have  belonged  to  any  formal  priesthood. 
The  way  in  which  this  came  about  was  through  its  utterance 
as  regards  Socrates.  Of  that  utterance  there  are  two  versions, 
slightly  differing ;  let  me  quote  both.  First  let  me  give  the 
version  as  Plato  reports  it,  in  the  account  which  he  gives  of 
the  apology  or  public  defence  of  Socrates,  when  tried  before 
the  Athenian  people;    it  runs  thus: 

You  must  have  known  Chaerephon ;  he  was  early  a  friend  of  mine, 
and  also  a  friend  of  yours,  for  he  shared  in  the  exile  of  the  people,  and 
returned  with  you.  Well,  Chaerephon,  as  you  know,  was  very  impetuous 
in  all  his  doings ;  and  he  went  to  Delphi  and  boldly  asked  the  oracle  to  tell 
him  whether — (as  I  was  saying,  I  must  beg  you  not  to  interrupt) — he 
asked  the  oracle  to  tell  him  whether  there  was  any  one  wiser  than  I  was. 


CH.  vn]      THE  HELLENIC   QUEST  AFTER  TRUTH      161 

and  the  Pythian  prophetess  answered,  that  there  was  no  man  wiser. 
Chaerephon  is  dead  himself ;  but  his  brother,  who  is  in  court,  will  confirm 
the  truth  of  this  story.     Jowett's  Dialogues  of  Plato,  vol.  i.  p.  335. 

The  other  version  occurs  in  the  apology  of  Socrates  as  reported 
by  Xenophon: 

Chaerephon  once,  in  the  presence  of  many  witnesses,  put  a  question 
at  Delphi  concerning  me,  and  Apollo  answered  that  there  was  no  human 
being  more  liberal,  or  more  upright,  or  more  temperate  than  myself. 
The  Works  of  Xenophon,  by  H.  G.  Dakyns,  vol.  ni.  part  i.  p.   189. 

The  Platonic  version  is  no  doubt  the  correct  one  here ;  but 
the  question  arises,  how  came  the  Delphic  oracle  to  know  anything 
at  all  about  Socrates?  The  answer  is,  that  the  age  was  one  in 
which  sceptical  opinions  were  growing;  and  sceptical  though 
Socrates  himself  was,  he  yet  welcomed  and  did  not  abandon 
religion,  as  it  was  practically  held  in  his  own  country,  including 
the  reverence  for  Delphi.  In  a  self-confident  age  a  wise  man 
had  been  found  who  was  not  self-confident,  but  who  trusted  in 
the  Gods;  and  the  fact  was  sufficiently  remarkable  to  have 
attracted  attention,  even  at  Delphi.  If  this  account  of  the  matter 
be  true,  it  must  raise  our  opinion  of  the  Delphic  oracle ;  we  shaU 
perceive  in  it  a  seriousness  of  intention ;  but  after  all  it  is  Socrates 
who  must  attract  our  highest  interest,  and  it  is  his  position  as 
a  man  and  as  a  teacher  that  I  must  now  proceed  to  examine. 
But,  first,  to  speak  of  his  predecessors. 

Except  the  dimly  seen  figure  of  Pythagoras,  there  is  not  among 
the  Greeks  before  Socrates  any  nameable  person,  whose  influence 
can  possibly  be  held  to  have  had  its  strong  animating  centre  in 
religion ;  and  even  of  Pythagoras  little  can  be  said  in  this  con- 
nexion. The  Greeks  were  rehgious,  but  religion  entered  into 
their  lives  as  one  of  many  various  and  complex  influences ;  and 
hence  we  must  not  be  surprised  if,  in  the  days  before  rationahsm 
began  to  aff!ect  the  Greek  mind,  the  poets  are  they  who  give  us 
the  most  striking  examples  of  religious  seriousness.  By  ^Eschylus 
and  Sophocles  the  heathen  mythology  is  used  in  such  a  way 
that  pure  rehgion  shines  through  it;  the  mythology  is  assumed 
without  questioning,  but  the  morality  of  those  two  poets,  which 
is  in  many  respects  very  profound,  is  not  dependent  on  the  mytho- 
logy ;  a  mysterious  goodness  is  ascribed  to  the  supreme  Powers 
which  rule  all  things.  Thus  the  Chorus  in  the  Agamemnon  of 
^schylus,  after  briefly  referring  to  Uranus  and  Cronus,  who  were 
said  to  have  preceded  Zeus  as  rulers  of  the  immortals,  proceed 

M.  D.  A.  11 


162  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

to  speak  of  Zeus  in  terms  which  seem  to  imply  that  he  is  the  true 
and  only  author  of  divine  judgments : 

"  He  who  in  triumphal  tones  calls  on  Zeus" — thus  their  song  runs — 
"shall  obtain  perfect  wisdom;  Zeus,  who  guides  men  in  the  way  of  know- 
ledge, who  has  laid  down  the  inviolable  law  that  through  suffering  comes 
experience." 

That  is  a  monotheistic  passage  written  by  a  poet  who  was 
apparently  a  polytheist ;  and  the  numerous  passages  in  iEschylus 
which  speak  of  the  just  retribution  of  woe  to  the  sinner,  are  all 
based  on  a  belief  in  mysterious  divine  powers  which  either  are 
unnamed  or  which  centre  in  Zeus.  It  is  true  that  in  the  Prome- 
theus Bound,  and  in  the  three  plays  which  collectively  are  called 
the  Oresteia,  ^Eschylus  does  set  great  store  by  the  mythology ; 
but  in  each  case  it  is  with  the  intention  of  showing  that  peace 
and  harmony  are  the  ultimate  purpose  of  the  divine  will,  and  that 
Zeus  is  conducting  all  things  to  this  end.  We  see  that  this  is 
the  case  in  the  Oresteia,  and  though  the  play  is  lost  which  would 
have  brought  the  Prometheus  Bound  to  its  full  end,  we  know  that 
in  that  case  also  a  harmonious  result  was  attained  under  the  will 
of  Zeus. 

The  mythology  is  as  much  accepted  by  Sophocles  as  by 
^schylus,  though  not  as  much  dwelt  upon ;  but  even  more  than 
^schylus  does  Sophocles  use  phrases  which  in  their  simple  religious 
trust  recall  the  Bible.  "Take  courage,  my  child,  take  courage," 
say  the  Chorus  to  the  despairing  Electra;  "Zeus  is  still  mighty 
in  heaven,  he  who  beholds  and  governs  all  things  ;  to  whom  submit 
the  anger  that  torments  thee ;  be  not  overmuch  afflicted  by  thy 
foes,  and  yet  forget  them  not."  In  a  similar  tone  Antigone, 
after  burying  her  brother  contrary  to  the  prohibition  of  Creon, 
speaks  to  the  tyrant : 

It  entered  not  my  mind  that  thy  proclamations  were  of  such  power, 
that  thou  a  mortal  shouldest  override  the  unwritten  and  unshakable  laws 
of  the  Gods ;  those  laws  are  not  of  to-day  or  yesterday,  but  are  eternal, 
and  no  man  knows  whence  they  came  into  being. 

So  too  the  Chorus  in  the  (Edipus  Tyrannus  pray  for  "  a  pious 
purity  of  word  and  deed,  according  to  the  lofty  laws  of  which 
heaven  is  the  sole  father:  great  is  God  in  these  and  groweth  not 
old."  (ireat  too  was  the  indignation  of  Sophock^s  against 
blasplieniers  of  the  Gods ;  as  appears  in  the  sequel  of  the  chorus 
just  quoted,  and  also  in  the  Ajax.  A  gentle  yet  strong  spirit 
was  he;  the  Athenians  once  made  him,  in  reward  for  his  poetry, 
an  admiral ;  but  they  had  the  good  sense  to  give  him  Pericles  as 


vn]         THE  HELLENIC   QUEST  AFTER  TRUTH  163 

a   colleague  in   actual  service.      However,  he   would  no  doubt 
have  fought  bravely,  as  iEschylus  did  at  Marathon. 

Those   who,   after  reading   the   tragedies   of   -^schylus   and 

Sophocles,  proceed   to   read   those   three   solemn   and   affecting 

\  Platonic  works,  which  narrate  the  trial,  imprisonment,  and  death 

;  of  Socrates,  namely  the  Apology,  Crito,  and  Phcedo,  will  not  feel 

that  they  have  changed  their  atmosphere  at  all,  as  far  as  religious 

^  beUef  and  hope  goes ;    they  are  indeed  beholding  religious  belief 

(  exemplified  in  a  real  man,  and  not  in  the  shadowy  personages 

I  of  ancient  legend ;  but  the  kind  of  belief  is  the  same.     The  religion 

^  in  its  details  is  mistaken,  and  Socrates  at  any  rate  knew  that  it 

5  was  mistaken ;    but  the  spirit  of  the  beHef  is  one  of  trust  in  the 

/  Gods,  and  trust  that  the  Gods  are  ruling  human  affairs  in  such 

^  wise  that  a  happy  and  harmonious  end  will  be  realised. 

Now  the  philosophers  of  Greece  who  precede  Socrates  are  by 
no  means  centred  in  this  sort  of  attitude.  Heraclitus  indeed 
is  imbued  with  the  conviction  that  the  Divine  nature  is  intrinsi- 
cally rational;  and  Xenophanes  protests  against  the  anthropo- 
morphic conceptions  of  the  Deity  prevalent  among  his  contem- 
poraries. In  the  refined  abstractions  of  Parmenides  we  discern 
a  conviction  of  the  unity  of  the  world,  and  that  in  this  unity 
goodness  consists.  But  aU  these  modes  of  thinking,  though 
connected  with  religion,  are  not  the  heart  of  religion ;  the  feeling 
of  trust  is  not  dominant.  Still  less  is  it  dominant  in  Thales, 
Anaximander,  Anaximenes,  Empedocles,  Democritus,  or  Anaxa- 
goras.  On  the  whole,  these  writers  are  physicists;  though  in 
their  physical  speculations  the  proportion  of  observation  to  theory 
is  much  smaller  than  in  the  physicists  of  the  present  day.  They 
have  a  regard  for  religion,  and  for  religion  in  a  sense  different 
from  the  popular  mythology,  but  religion  is  not  their  central 
thought.  Of  Pythagoras  I  spoke  above  ;  a  great  genius  he  seems 
to  have  been;  but  his  exact  attitude  towards  religion  has  not 
been  clearly  told  us. 

Every  reader  of  ^schylus  and  Sophocles,  and  it  may  be  added 
of  Pindar  also,  will  be  sensible  that  religion  stood  for  a  much 
greater  force,  a  much  more  overpowering  topic  of  thought,  to 
those  poets  than  it  did  to  the  philosophers  of  the  sixth  century 
or  the  early  fifth  century  before  Christ.  But  with  the  splendour 
of  Athens  under  Pericles  there  arose  a  light  and  sceptical  vein 
of  thought,  pervading  the  Athenian  mind  (not  without  examples 
in  other  parts  of  Greece  also).  Euripides,  the  third  great  drama- 
tist of  Athens,  has  drawn  in  the  breath  of  scepticism ;  he  has  the 

11—2 


164  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  [oh. 

air  of  one  who  would  be  religious  if  he  could ;  but  he  sees  with  too 
perspicacious  an  eye  the  moral  faults  of  the  mythology,  and  he 
knows  not  how  to  transcend  this  impediment.  Nor  is  the  great 
comic  poet  Aristophanes,  with  all  his  love  for  ancient  manners, 
really  a  religious  mind;  his  greatest  quality,  apart  from  his 
brilliant  imagination,  is  his  love  of  peace,  and  of  Hellas  as  Hellas. 
Among  the  succeeding  poets  of  Greece  there  is  only  one  who  is 
markedly  religious,  and  that  is  Cleanthes,  who  was  primarily 
a  philosopher;  his  noble  hymn  to  Zeus  exhibits  the  basis  of 
religious  feeling  in  a  very  pure  and  simple  form. 

But  I  return  to  Socrates.  That  he  was  firm  as  a  rock,  tender 
as  a  child,  is  admitted  by  all ;  the  question  is,  whether  he  was  also 
profound  in  intellect.  No  one  probably  would  have  denied  that 
he  was  so,  if  his  faithful  and  attached  follower  Xenophon  had  not 
written  about  him.  As  it  is,  we  have  two  witnesses  respecting 
Socrates,  Xenophon  and  Plato.  If  Plato  alone  had  written 
about  him,  there  would  certainly  have  been  a  doubt  as  to  how  far 
Plato  had  mingled  his  own  opinions  with  the  opinions  of  Socrates  ; 
but  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  deny  that  Socrates  was 
a  subtle  and  deep  inquirer ;  so  intense  is  the  search  for  truth 
which  Plato  everywhere  attributes  to  him.  But  Xenophon 
represents  Socrates  not  so  much  as  in  search  of  truth,  as 
having  found  truth  ;  and  the  substitution,  though  it  does  not 
injure  Socrates  as  a  man,  does  injure  him  as  a  thinker;  for  the 
kind  of  truth  which  Xenophon  loves  to  attribute  to  Socrates 
is  truth  of  a  practical  sort,  roughly  but  not  clearly  held ;  whereas 
Plato  in  his  delineation  of  Socrates  attributes  to  him  also  the 
desire  (and  a  very  intense  desire)  to  see  truth  clearly.  Now  the 
tendency  among  modern  writers  has  been  either  to  reject  or  to 
mistake  this  testimony  of  Plato  about  Socrates.  Those  persons 
have  rejected  it  who  regard  Socrates  simply  as  a  plain  honest 
man  and  nothing  more ;  and  who  think  that  all  the  discourses 
which  Plato  attributes  to  him  are  simply  instances  of  Plato's 
wonderful  power  of  imagination.  Those  persons  mistake  Plato's 
testimony  who  think  that  Socrates  was  simply  a  reasoner  for 
reasoning's  sake,  and  that  that  exalted  region  of  positive  concep- 
tions in  which  Plato  takes  delight  did  not  belong  to  Socrates  at  all. 

Let  me  try  to  show  the  real  state  of  the  case.  I  am  not 
ignoring  the  value  of  Xenophon's  account  of  Socrates ;  he  gives 
us  the  practical  side  of  Socrates  much  more  than  Plato  does. 
It  is  he  who  tells  us  how  Socrates  remonstrated  with  his  son 
Lamproclcs  for  bitterly  resenting  the  harsh  words  of  his  mother 


vu]         THE  HELLENIC  QUEST  AFTER  TRUTH  165 

Xanthippe;  and  we  gather  from  Xenophon  that  Xanthippe's 
bark  was  worse  than  her  bite,  and  that  she  was  really  an  affection- 
ate and  careful  mother;  of  which  fact  Socrates  duly  reminds  his 
son.  It  is  Xenophon  who  teUs  us  how  Socrates  tried  to  reconcile, 
and  it  would  seem  did  reconcile,  the  two  brothers  Chserephon 
and  Chserecrates ;  how  he  led  Aristarchus  to  supply  with  useful 
work  the  female  relatives  who  had  rather  forced  themselves  on 
his  hospitahty  and  protection;  how  he  dissuaded  Glaucon  from 
attempting  a  political  career  until  he  had  provided  himself  with 
the  necessary  knowledge  as  to  the  revenues  and  forces  of  Athens. 
It  is  Xenophon  who  teUs  us  that  the  cause  of  the  change  of  Critias 
from  friendship  to  enmity  towards  Socrates  was  that  Socrates 
had  found  fault  with  him  as  showing  signs  of  an  impure  passion ; 
and  how  Socrates  more  gently  remonstrated  with  Critobulus 
when  in  some  danger  of  a  similar  kind.  It  is  Xenophon  who 
describes  to  us  the  interest  which  Socrates  took  in  the  household 
of  Ischomachus,  and  how  the  wife  of  Ischomachus  was  tenderly 
trained  by  her  husband  in  household  duties ;  a  graceful  picture, 
probably  ampHfied  by  Xenophon's  imagination,  but  still  having 
a  basis  of  truth.  The  conduct  of  Socrates  as  regards  the  duties 
of  ordinary  life  is  much  more  to  the  front  in  Xenophon  than  it 
is  in  Plato,  and  a  very  important  part  of  the  life  of  Socrates  it 
is  which  Xenophon  thus  gives  us. 

But  Xenophon  was  very  far  from  being  a  speculative  philo- 
sopher himself,  and  though  a  man  of  very  varied  ability,  subtlety 
of  argument  was  foreign  to  him ;  it  is  not  that  he  is  unintellectual, 
but  the  feeling  of  intense  intellectual  search  could  hardly  exist 
in  a  man  who  was  also  a  skilful  military  leader,  and  a  historian 
and  popular  writer  of  no  slight  merit.  Moreover,  besides  being 
unable,  Xenophon  was  doubtless  also  unwilling  to  exhibit  Socrates 
as  a  very  subtle  arguer ;  it  is  the  evident  object  of  the  Memorabilia 
to  convince  ordinary  men,  and  in  particular  ordinary  Athenians, 
that  Socrates  was  a  man  of  the  highest  moral  excellence,  and  that 
to  condemn  him  to  death  had  been  a  piece  of  great  wrong-doing 
on  the  part  of  the  Athenians ;  plain  and  not  abstruse  arguments 
were  needed  in  maintaining  such  a  thesis.  But  when  Xenophon 
gives  a  description  of  the  general  conversation  of  Socrates,  there 
is  great  room  in  it  for  deep  and  subtle  thought.  Here  is  his  list 
of  the  Socratic  topics. 

What  is  piety  ?  what  is  impiety  ?  what  is  the  beautiful  ?  what  the 
ugly  ?  what  the  noble  ?  what  the  base  ?  what  are  meant  by  jiist  and 
unjust  ?  what  by  sobriety  and  madness  ?  what  by  courage  and  cowardice? 


166  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  [ch. 

what  is  a  state  T  what  is  a  statesmaxi  ?  what  is  a  ruler  over  men  ?  what 
is  a  ruling  character^  T 

It  is  remarkable  that  this  list  of  Socratic  subjects  accords  better 
with  the  conversations  of  Socrates  as  recorded  by  Plato,  than  with 
the  conversations  of  Socrates  as  recorded  by  Xenophon  himself. 
Not  that  I  am  disputing  Xenophon's  testimony ;  but  it  is  no  doubt 
most  exact  where  he  keeps  himself  most  remote  from  subtleties 
of  argument.  It  is  precisely  here  that  Plato  is  strongest,  but  at 
the  same  time  most  disposed  to  amplify  the  argument  on  his 
own  account ;  yet  I  think  I  can  show  that  even  here  he  is  trust- 
worthy in  a  fair  degree. 

It  will  tend  to  set  the  mutual  relations  of  Xenophon  and  Plato, 
as  biographers  of  Socrates,  in  a  clear  light,  and  will  besides  be 
highly  pertinent  to  the  subject  of  the  present  treatise,  if  I  quote 
from  Xenophon  and  Plato  the  passages  in  which  they  respectively 
report  the  sayings  of  Socrates  on  the  reason  we  have  for  believing 
in  a  Divine  Power,  and  some  of  the  bearings  of  such  belief.  To 
take  Xenophon  first ;  here  is  part  of  the  dialogue  between  Socrates 
and  Aristodemus  from  the  Memorabilia^: 

I  will  first  state  [says  Xenophon]  what  I  once  heard  fall  from  his  lips 
in  a  discussion  with  Aristodemus  "  the  little,"  as  he  was  called,  on  the  topic 
of  divinity.  Socrates  had  observed  that  Aristodemus  neither  sacrificed 
nor  gave  heed  to  divination,  but  on  the  contrary  was  disposed  to  ridicule 
those  who  did. 

Tell  me,  Aristodemus  (he  began),  are  there  any  human  beings  who 
have  won  your  admiration  for  their  wisdom? 

Ar.     There  are. 

Soc.     Would  you  mention  to  us  their  names  ? 

Ar.  In  the  writing  of  epic  poetry  I  have  the  greatest  admiration  for 
Homer,  and  as  a  dith\Tambic  poet  for  Melanippus.  I  admire  also  Sophocles 
as  a  tragedian,  Polycleitus  as  a  sculptor,  and  Zeuxis  as  a  painter. 

Soc.  Which  should  you  consider  the  more  worthy  of  admiration, 
a  fashioner  of  senseless  images  devoid  of  motion  or  one  who  could  fashion 
living  creatures  endowed  with  understanding  and  activity  ? 

Ar.  Decidedly  the  latter,  provided  his  livnng  creatures  owed  their 
birth  to  design  and  were  not  the  offspring  of  some  chance. 

Soc.  But  now  if  you  had  two  sorts  of  things,  the  one  of  which  presents 
no  clue  as  to  what  it  is  for,  and  the  other  is  obviously  for  some  useful 
purpose — which  should  you  judge  to  be  the  result  of  chance,  which  of 
design  ? 

Ar.  Clearly  that  which  is  produced  for  some  useful  end  is  the  work 
of  design. 

Soc.  Does  it  not  strike  you  then  that  he  who  made  man  from  the 
beginning  did  for  some  useful  end  furnish  him  with  his  several  senses — 


•  Dakyns'  Xenophon,  vol.  in.  part  i.  p.  5. 

*  Ibid.  pp.  25  sqq. 


VII]         THE   HELLENIC   QUEST  AFTER   TRUTH  167 

giving  him  eyes  to  behold  the  visible  world,  and  ears  to  catch  the  intonations 
of  soiind  ?  Or  again,  what  good  would  there  be  in  odovirs  if  nostrils  had 
not  been  bestowed  upon  us  ?  what  perception  of  sweet  things  and  pvingent, 
£ind  of  all  the  pleasures  of  the  palate,  had  not  a  tongue  been  fashioned  in 
us  as  an  interpreter  of  the  same  ?  And  besides  all  this,  do  you  not  think 
this  looks  Uke  a  matter  of  foresight,  this  closing  of  the  delicate  orbs  of  sight 
with  eyelids  as  with  folding  doors,  which,  when  there  is  need  to  use  them 
for  any  purpose,  can  be  thrown  wide  open  and  firmly  closed  again  in  sleep  ? 
and,  that  even  the  winds  of  heaven  may  not  visit  them  too  roughly,  this 
planting  of  the  eyelashes  like  a  protecting  screen  ?  this  coping  of  the  region 
above  the  eyes  with  cornice-work  of  eyebrow  so  that  no  drop  of  sweat  fall 
from  the  head  and  injure  them  ?  again  this  readiness  of  the  ear  to  catch  all 
sounds  and  yet  not  be  surcharged  ? .  . .  I  ask  you,  when  you  see  all  these 
things  constructed  with  such  show  of  foresight,  can  you  doubt  whether 
they  are  products  of  chance  or  intelligence? 

Ar.  No  doubt  these  do  look  like  the  contrivances  of  some  one  de- 
liberately planning  the  existence  of  living  creatures. 

Soc.     Well,  and  doubtless  you  feel  to  have  a  spark  of  wisdom  yourself  ? 
Ar.     Put  your  questions,  and  I  will  answer. 

Soc.  And  yet  you  imagine  that  elsewhere  no  spark  of  wisdom  is  to  be 
found  ?  And  that,  too,  when  you  know  that  you  have  in  yoiir  body  a  tiny 
fragment  only  of  the  mighty  earth,  a  little  drop  of  the  great  waters,  and 
of  the  other  elements,  vast  in  their  extent,  you  got,  I  presvune,  a  particle 
of  each  towards  the  compacting  of  your  bodily  frame  ?  Mind  alone,  it 
would  seem,  which  is  nowhere  to  be  found,  you  had  the  lucky  chance  to 
snap  up  and  make  off  with,  you  cannot  tell  how.  And  these  things  around 
and  about  us,  enormous  in  size,  infinite  in  number,  owe  their  orderly 
arrangement,  I  suppose,  to  some  vacuity  of  wit  ? 

Ar.  It  may  be,  for  my  eyes  fail  to  see  the  master  agents  of  these,  as 
one  sees  the  fabricators  of  things  produced  on  earth. 

Soc.  No  more  do  you  see  your  own  soul,  which  is  the  master  agent 
of  your  body ;  so  that,  as  far  as  that  goes,  you  may  maintain,  if  you  like, 
that  you  do  nothing  with  intelligence,  but  everything  by  chance. 

At  this  point  Aristodemiis :  I  assure  you,  Socrates,  that  I  do  not  disdain 
the  Divine  power.  On  the  contrary,  my  belief  is  that  the  Divinity  is  too 
grand  to  need  any  service  which  I  could  render. 

Soc.  But  the  grander  that  power  is,  which  deigns  to  tend  and  wait 
upon  you,  the  more  you  are  called  upon  to  honour  it. .  .  .  Ah,  my  good  sir, 
lay  to  heart  and  understand  that  even  as  your  own  mind  within  you  can 
turn  and  dispose  of  your  body  as  it  lists,  so  ought  we  to  think  that  the 
wisdom  which  abides  within  the  universal  frame  does  so  dispose  of  all 
things  as  it  finds  agreeable  to  itself:  for  hardly  may  it  be  that  your  eye 
is  able  to  range  over  many  a  league,  but  that  the  eye  of  God  is  powerless 
to  embrace  all  things  at  a  glance ;  or  that  to  your  soul  it  is  given  to  dwell 
in  thought  on  matters  here  or  far  away  in  Egypt  or  in  Sicily,  but  that  the 
wisdom  or  thought  of  God  is  not  sufficient  to  include  all  things  at  one 
instant  under  His  care.  If  only  you  would  copy  your  own  behaviour 
where  human  beings  are  concerned.  It  is  by  acts  of  service  and  of  kindness 
that  you  discover  which  of  your  fellows  are  willing  to  requite  you  in  kind. 
It  is  by  taking  another  into  your  counsel  that  you  arrive  at  the  secret  of 
his  wisdom.  If,  on  like  principle,  you  will  but  make  trial  of  the  Gods  by 
acts  of  service,  whether  they  will  choose  to  give  you  coim.sel  in  matters 


168  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [oh. 

obscure  to  mortal  vision,  you  shall  discover  the  nature  and  the  greatness 
of  Godhead  to  be  such  that  they  are  able  at  once  to  see  all  things  and  to 
hear  all  things  and  to  be  present  everywhere,  nor  does  the  least  thing 
escape  their  watchful  csire. 

I  trust  the  reader  does  not  think  my  quotation  too  long 
(I  have  been  obliged  to  curtail  the  passage).  For  its  mixture  of 
theory  and  practical  advice,  it  seems  to  me  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able passages  in  all  ancient  literature ;  and  the  comment  which 
Xenophon  appends  to  the  dialogue  which  he  has  recorded  is  one 
which  may  well  be  echoed  by  his  readers  now  and  always : 

To  my  mind  the  effect  of  words  like  these  was  to  cause  those  about 
him  to  hold  aloof  from  unholiness,  baseness,  and  injustice,  not  only  whilst 
they  were  seen  of  men,  but  even  in  the  solitary  plaxje,  since  they  must 
believe  that  no  part  of  their  conduct  could  escape  the  eye  of  Heaven. 

Nevertheless  it  is  obvious  that  such  a  mixture  of  argument 
and  exhortation  leaves  many  questions  unanswered  both  on  the 
theoretical  and  on  the  practical  side.  The  position  taken  up  is 
just  and  right  as  a  beginning;  the  Greek  mythology  is  entirely 
absent  from  it;  and  as  regards  one  detail,  namely  that  Socrates 
speaks  of  "the  Gods"  in  the  plural  number,  it  may  be  observed 
that  the  same  plural  form  occurs  in  the  first  verse  of  the  Hebrew 
Bible,  and  in  neither  case  is  it  in  the  least  intended  to  impair  the 
unity  of  the  divine  purpose.  But  it  is  one  thing  to  say  that  a 
position  is  a  right  one  to  start  from,  and  another  thing  that  we 
ought  to  be  satisfied  with  it.  If  the  meaning  of  Socrates,  in  his 
argument  with  Aristodemus,  was  that  the  position  laid  down  by 
him  was  one  that  we  might  acquiesce  in  without  further  inquiry — 
if  he  was  oblivious  or  imperceptive  of  the  fact  that  it  does  need 
support  in  the  details  of  scientific  experience  and  of  practical 
life — then  we  should  certainly  be  obliged  to  say  that  his  range 
of  thought  was  a  limited  one.     Are  we  obliged  to  say  this? 

We  must  not  expect  that  Xenophon,  admirable  though  he 
is  in  his  own  line,  will  supply  us  with  sayings  of  Socrates  that  go 
beyond  the  intellectual  scope  of  the  passage  I  have  just  quoted. 
But  let  us  see  what  Plato  tells  us.  In  the  Pha?do,  Socrates  is 
represented  as  giving  an  account  of  his  early  thoughts  on  philo- 
sophy ;  of  his  attraction  to  the  [)hilosophy  of  Anaxagoras  from 
what  he  heard  of  it  in  general,  his  disappointment  with  that 
philosophy  when  ho  examined  it  in  detail.  Here  is  the  passage 
(Jowett's  Plato,  vol.  i.  pp.   440  sqq) : 

Then  I  heard  some  (mo  who  had  a  book  of  Anaxagoras,  as  he  said, 
out  of  which  he  read  that  inind  was  the  disposer  and  cause  of  all,  and  I  was 
quite  delighted  at  the  notion  of  this,  which  appeared  admirable,  and  1  said 


vn]         THE   HELLENIC   QUEST   AFTER   TRUTH  169 

to  myself,  If  mind  is  the  disposer,  mind  will  dispose  all  for  the  best,  and 
put  each  particular  in  the  best  place ;  and  I  argued  that  if  any  one  desired 
to  find  out  the  cause  of  the  generation  or  destruction  or  existence  of  any- 
thing, he  must  find  out  what  state  of  being  or  suffering  or  doing  was  best 
for  that  thing,  and  therefore  a  man  had  only  to  consider  the  best  for  himself 
and  others,  and  then  he  would  also  know  the  worse,  for  that  the  same 
science  comprised  both.  And  I  rejoiced  to  think  that  I  had  found  in 
Anaxagoras  a  teacher  of  the  causes  of  existence  such  as  I  desired,  and 
T  imagined  that  he  would  tell  me  first  whether  the  earth  is  flat  or  round ; 
and  then  he  would  further  explain  the  cause  and  the  necessity  of  this, 
and  would  teach  me  the  natixre  of  the  best  and  show  that  this  was  best; 
and  if  he  said  that  the  earth  was  in  the  centre,  he  would  explain  that  this 
position  was  the  best,  and  I  should  be  satisfied  if  this  were  shown  to  me, 
and  not  want  any  other  sort  of  cause.  And  I  thought  that  I  would  then 
go  on  and  ask  him  about  the  sun  and  moon  and  stars,  and  that  he  would 
explain  to  me  their  comparative  swiftness,  and  their  retumings  and  various 
states,  and  how  their  several  affections,  active  and  passive,  were  all  for 
the  best.  For  I  could  not  imagine  that  when  he  spoke  of  mind  as  the 
disposer  of  them,  he  would  give  any  other  accoiint  of  their  being  as  they 
are,  except  that  this  was  the  best ;  and  I  thought  that  when  he  had  explained 
to  me  in  detail  the  caxise  of  each  and  the  cause  of  all,  he  would  go  on  to 
explain  to  me  what  was  best  for  each  and  what  was  best  for  all.  I  had 
hopes  which  I  would  not  have  sold  for  much,  and  I  seized  the  books  and 
read  them  as  fast  as  I  could  in  my  eagerness  to  know  the  better  and  the 
worse. 

What  hopes  I  had  formed,  and  how  grievously  was  I  disappointed ! 
As  I  proceeded,  I  found  my  philosopher  altogether  forsaking  mind  or  any 
other  principle  of  order,  but  having  recourse  to  air,  and  ether,  and  water, 
and  other  eccentricities.  I  might  compare  him  to  a  person  who  began  by 
maintaining  generally  that  mind  is  the  cause  of  the  actions  of  Socrates, 
but  who,  when  he  endeavoured  to  explain  the  causes  of  my  several  actions 
in  detail,  went  on  to  show  that  I  sit  here  because  my  body  is  made  up  of 
bones  and  muscles ;  and  the  bones,  as  he  would  say,  are  hard  and  have 
ligaments  which  divide  them,  and  the  muscles  are  elastic,  and  they  cover 
the  bones,  which  have  also  a  covering  or  environment  of  flesh  and  skin  which 
contains  them ;  and  as  the  bones  are  lifted  at  their  joints  by  the  contraction 
or  relaxation  of  the  muscles,  I  am  able  to  bend  my  limbs,  and  this  is  why 
I  am  sitting  here  in  a  curved  postxire ; — that  is  what  he  would  say,  and  he 
would  have  a  similar  explanation  of  my  talking  to  you,  which  he  would 
attribute  to  soiind,  and  air,  and  hearing,  and  he  would  assign  ten  thousand 
other  causes  of  the  same  sort,  forgetting  to  mention  the  true  cause,  which 
is,  that  the  Athenians  have  thought  fit  to  condemn  me,  and  accordingly 
I  have  thought  it  better  and  more  right  to  remain  here  and  undergo  my 
sentence ;  for  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  these  muscles  and  bones  of  mine 
would  have  gone  off  to  Megara  or  Boeotia — by  the  dog  of  Egypt  they  wovdd, 
if  they  had  been  guided  only  by  their  own  idea  of  what  was  best,  and  if 
I  had  not  chosen  as  the  better  and  nobler  part,  instead  of  playing  truant 
and  running  away,  to  undergo  any  punishment  which  the  state  inflicts. 
There  is  surely  a  strange  confusion  of  causes  and  conditions  in  all  this. 
It  may  be  said,  indeed,  that  without  bones  and  muscles  and  the  other  parts 
of  my  body,  I  cannot  execute  my  purposes.  But  to  say  that  I  do  as  I  do 
because  of  them,  and  that   this  is  the  way  in  which  mind  acts,  and  not 


170  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

from  the  choice  of  the  best,  is  a  very  careless  and  idle  mode  of  speaking. 
I  wonder  that  they  cemnot  distinguish  the  caiise  from  the  condition,  which 
the  many,  feeling  about  in  the  deu'k,  are  always  mistaking  and  misnaming. 
And  thus  one  man  makes  a  vortex  all  round  and  steadies  the  earth  by  the 
heaven ;  another  gives  the  air  as  a  support  to  the  earth,  which  is  a  sort  of 
broad  trough.  Any  power  which  in  disposing  them  as  they  are  disposes 
them  for  the  best  never  enters  into  their  minds,  nor  do  they  imagine  that 
there  is  any  superhuman  strength  in  that;  they  rather  exp>ect  to  find 
another  Atlas  of  the  world  who  is  stronger  and  more  everlasting  and  more 
containing  than  the  good  is,  and  are  clearly  of  opinion  that  the  obligatory 
and  containing  power  of  the  good  is  as  nothing;  and  yet  this  is  the 
principle  which  I  would  fain  learn  if  any  one  would  teeuih  me. 

There  is  no  direct  mention  of  the  Divine  Power  in  this  passage ; 
but  it  is  quite  evident  that  it  is  the  Divine  Power  of  which  Socrates 
is  speaking,  and  that  the  "mind"  of  which  he  is  in  search  is  the 
Supreme  Mind.  What,  however,  I  am  most  concerned  here  to 
remark  is  this :  the  passage  from  Plato  is  on  the  same  hnes  as 
the  passage  from  Xenophon,  but  is  an  extension  of  it  into  a  region 
where  the  phenomena  do  not  so  clearly  indicate  the  conclusion 
which  Socrates  has  at  heart,  namely  the  goodness  of  the  Divine 
Mind.  In  Xenophon,  Socrates  tells  Aristodemus  that  the  Divine 
Power  has  been  his  benefactor  by  giving  him  those  senses  which 
are  percipient  of  the  external  world ;  in  Plato,  Socrates  tells 
his  hearers  how  keen  his  desire  had  always  been  to  discern  that 
goodness  was  inherent  in  the  structure  of  the  universe  at  large, 
where  there  are  many  phenomena  discernible  as  facts,  but  not 
readily  seen  to  be  examples  of  beneficence.  The  moral  character 
of  the  passage  from  Xenophon,  and  of  the  passage  from  Plato, 
is  the  same;  only  in  Xenophon,  Socrates  speaks  as  one  declaring 
certainties,  in  Plato  he  speaks  as  one  in  search ;  the  difference 
being  produced  by  the  difference  in  the  phenomena  which  are 
the  subject  of  the  inquiry.  When  we  consider  that  according 
to  the  testimony  of  both  Xenophon  and  Plato,  Socrates  was 
a  person  preeminently  searching  after  true  moral  principles,  the 
probability  that  the  passage  in  Plato  is  an  authentic  account  of 
what  Socrates  really  said  must  be  admitted  to  be  great ;  nor  are 
there  wanting  other  reasons  to  confirm  this  inference.  Though 
Xenophon  does  not  record  the  disappointment  which  Socrates 
felt  on  reading  Anaxagoras,  in  the  way  in  which  it  is  recorded  in 
the  Phaedo,  he  does  record  the  disapproval  of  Anaxagoras  felt 
by  Socrates,  especially  in  regard  to  the  view  of  Anaxagoras  that 
the  sun  was  no  more  than  a  "fiery  stone^" ;  and  the  disapproval 
on  this  ground  is  repeated  also  in  the  Apology  of  Socrates  as  given 

'  Memorabilia,  IV.  7. 


vn]         THE  HELLENIC   QUEST  AFTER  TRUTH  171 

by  Plato.  The  three  passages  are  confirmatory  of  one  another. 
Xenophon  adds,  that  Socrates  remarked  on  the  vivifying  effect 
of  the  sun's  rays  on  plants  as  distinguishing  it  from  ordinary  fire ; 
an  observation  which  in  its  main  purport  is  also  attributed  to 
Socrates  in  Plato's  RepubHc^.  An  additional  reason  for  holding 
the  passage  in  the  Phsedo  to  be  an  authentic  utterance  of  Socrates 
lies  in  the  expression  of  doubt  which  the  passage  contains  as  to 
whether  the  earth  is  flat  or  round.  When  Socrates  was  a  young 
man,  let  us  say  between  the  years  450  and  440  B.C.,  the  rotundity 
of  the  earth,  though  growing  continually  more  probable,  was  not 
an  absolutely  established  doctrine;  there  was  a  possibihty  of 
doubt  being  expressed  on  the  matter.  But  it  is  very  unhkely 
that  Plato  in  his  mature  years  ever  had  a  doubt  on  the  point ;  in 
the  fanciful  description  of  the  earth  towards  the  end  of  the  Phsedo, 
for  instance  (which  I  agree  with  ordinary  critics  in  assigning  to 
Plato  as  distinguished  from  Socrates),  it  is  assumed  that  the  earth 
is  spherical.  Where  then  a  doubt  is  expressed  on  the  point,  we 
have  reason  to  say  that  the  doubt  was  one  entertained  by  Socrates 
in  his  youth,  rather  than  by  Plato  in  his  manhood;  and  this 
circumstance  tells  in  favour  of  the  authenticity  of  the  whole 
account. 

But  over  and  above  these  special  reasons,  let  the  reader  of 
the  passage  just  quoted  from  the  Phsedo  say  whether  it  does 
not  sound  Hke  a  genuine  piece  of  autobiography?  Plato  had 
a  sufficient  personal  intimacy  with  Socrates  to  be  in  a  position  to 
know  something  of  the  early  history  of  his  great  teacher;  and 
though  Plato  was  prevented  by  illness  from  being  a  witness  of 
the  last  scene  of  the  life  of  Socrates,  yet  if  Socrates  did  on  that 
occasion  relate  this  old  experience  of  his,  as  the  Phsedo  teUs  us 
that  he  did,  no  one  would  be  better  able  than  Plato  to  appreciate 
it  and  reproduce  it  from  the  evidence  of  another  (though  it  is  also 
likely  that  Plato  had  himself  heard  Socrates  on  some  other  occasion 
tell  this  experience).  Without  in  the  least  denying  that  Plato 
did  put  into  the  mouth  of  Socrates  opinions  and  poetic  descriptions 
which  did  not  belong  to  the  true  Socrates,  I  cannot  think  that 
so  specific  a  piece  of  autobiography  as  that  which  describes  the 
relations  of  Socrates  to  Anaxagoras  is  one  which  Plato  would 
have  invented ;  even  if  there  had  not  been  so  many  incidental 
reasons,  which  I  have  given  above,  for  thinking  the  passage 
authentic. 

But  if  the  passage  is  an  authentic  account  of  himself  given 

1  VI.  509  B» 


172  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

by  the  true  Socrates,  observe  what  follows.  All  that  kind  of 
representation  of  Socrates,  which  makes  him  out  to  be  a  mere 
pious,  good  man  with  an  extraordinary  delight  in  convicting  other 
people  of  ignorance,  falls  to  the  ground.  The  question  which 
Socrates  brings  forward  in  the  passage  from  the  Phsedo  is  the 
profoundest  of  all  questions  which  to  this  day  have  ever  come 
before  the  mind  of  man.  It  is  the  question,  whether  the  worid 
has  been  created  and  organised  for  good  ends.  That  question  is, 
it  is  true,  not  a  question  which  has  been  at  all  the  most  prominent 
in  modern  physical  science,  which  rests  on  external  observation. 
Nor  is  it  a  question  formally  propounded  in  the  Bible ;  though  the 
temper  inculcated  in  the  Bible  is  a  temper  which  looks  upon  all 
things  as  created  for  good  ends.  This  also  was  the  temper  of 
Socrates ;  but  the  faith  in  a  supreme  goodness  ruling  the  universe 
is  not  one  that  can  relieve  us  from  the  desire  of  seeing  in  actual 
experience  that  all  things  are  working  towards  good  issues,  and 
towards  an  increasing  happiness  and  well  being  of  all  living  things. 
The  inquiry  suggested  is  infinite  in  its  extent,  and  yet  perfectly 
clear  in  its  character;  and  the  person  who  first  propounded  it 
deserves  our  reverence  in  no  ordinary  degree.  That  person,  if  the 
reasonings  given  above  are  valid,  was  Socrates.  He  first  set 
before  men  the  endeavour,  expressed  long  afterwards  in  famous 
words  by  Milton, 

To  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man. 

It  is  desirable  that  I  should  follow  up  this  assertion  with  some 
further  argimients  directed  to  show  that  Plato,  with  all  his  imagina- 
tive and  dramatic  power,  was  yet  in  many  respects  a  trustworthy 
witness  respecting  the  sayings  and  doings  of  Socrates ;  though 
I  admit  that  he  is  not  so  in  every  respect,  and  in  regard  to  the 
most  elaborate  of  all  the  dialogues  into  which  Socrates  enters, 
the  Republic,  it  is  particularly  hard  to  draw  the  line  between  real 
memory  and  imaginative  expansion.  But  of  that  I  must  speak 
later;    on  the  more  general  question  I  argue  as  follows. 

In  the  first  place  Plato  gives,  what  Xenophon  nowhere  gives, 
an  intelligible  account  of  the  causes  which  made  Socrates  un- 
popular at  Athens,  and  which,  when  circumstances  at  last  brought 
them  to  a  head,  led  the  Athenians  to  condemn  him  to  death. 
That  long  and  energetic  practice  of  his,  the  subjecting  his  fellow- 
citizens  to  a  kind  of  continuous  catechising,  whereby  all  their 
ignorances  were  brought  to  light  and  their  self-esteem  hurt,  could 
not    but    produce    a    sentiment    against    him.     The    picturesque 


vn]         THE  HELLENIC  QUEST  AFTER  TRUTH  173 

description  of  his  conduct  in  this  respect,  given  in  his  apology 
as  recorded  by  Plato,  has  no  parallel  in  any  other  account  given 
of  him ;  the  simile,  which  he  there  appHes  to  himself,  as  a  "gadfly  " 
sent  by  divine  command  to  stir  up  the  Athenian  people  (whom 
he  compares  to  a  large  and  noble  but  somewhat  sluggish  horse) 
to  greater  energy,  is  transparently  authentic.  The  gadfly,  we 
may  be  sure,  would  not  be  liked  by  the  horse;  and  so  mean 
a  comparison,  while  it  would  never  have  been  appKed  to  Socrates 
by  an  ardently  devoted  follower,  is  just  what  Socrates,  with  his 
keen  sense  of  humour,  would  have  applied  to  himself.  Nor  can 
we  fail  to  recognise  in  that  ironical  courtesy  towards  opponents, 
of  which  Plato  gives  so  many  examples  in  Socrates,  a  weapon 
that  would  not  always  be  felt  to  be  conciliatory.  The  descriptive 
pen  of  Xenophon  is  not  equal  to  representing  this  irony  effectively ; 
but  he  recognises  the  fact  of  it  in  the  words  which  he  represents 
Hippias  as  saying  to  Socrates : 

We  have  had  enough  of  your  ridiculing  all  the  rest  of  the  world, 
questioning  and  cross-examining  first  one  and  then  the  other,  but  never 
a  bit  will  you  render  an  account  to  any  one  yourself  or  state  a  plain  opinion 
upon  a  single  topic.  Memorabilia,  iv.  chapter  4,  Dakyns'  Xenophon, 
vol.  III.  part  I.  p.   155. 

Aristotle  also  was  aware  of  the  irony  of  Socrates  {Ethics,  iv.  13), 
though  it  is  needless  to  say  that  Aristotle  does  not,  any  more 
than  Xenophon,  give  examples  of  this  irony.  It  is  Plato  who 
lets  us  see  it  in  action.  Further,  Plato  gives  us  a  very  important 
indication  of  the  way  in  which  Socrates  had  offended  the  religious 
susceptibilities  of  the  Athenians,  by  his  censure  of  large  parts 
of  the  mythology  (as  is  recorded  in  the  second  and  third  books  of 
the  Republic) ;  particularly  when  we  add  to  this  his  affirmation  of 
his  own  inspiration  by  a  Divine  Power.  Putting  these  two  things 
together,  we  see  exactly  why  Meletus  accused  Socrates  of  "refusing 
to  recognise  the  gods  acknowledged  by  the  State,  and  importing 
strange  divinities  of  his  own  "  ;  though  both  Xenophon  and  Plato 
tell  us  that  Socrates  sacrificed,  as  ordinary  Athenians  did,  to 
recognised  deities ;  it  was  only  the  unseemly  stories  respecting 
the  Gods  which  he  refused  to  accept. 

If  then  Plato  far  more  than  any  other  writer  makes  us  under- 
stand why  the  Athenians  put  Socrates  to  death,  is  not  this  a 
ground  for  giving  some  credit  to  his  testimony  as  to  the  sayings 
and  doings  of  Socrates?  Plato  may  have  been  partly  a  poet, 
but  he  was  also  partly  a  true  historian.  Let  me  add  another 
indication  to  the  same  effect. 


174  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  [cm. 

Of  all  philosophers,  Plato  is  the  most  brilliant ;  not  merely  is  he 
eloquent,  but  there  is  a  sparkle  in  his  dialogue  with  which  mere 
eloquence  is  not  usually  combined.  Yet,  if  any  one  looks  carefully 
into  the  occasions  when  this  briUiance,  this  sparkle,  is  manifested, 
he  will  find  it  to  be  dependent  on  the  presence  of  Socrates  among 
the  company.  Let  Socrates  depart,  and  the  sparkle  goes  too ; 
and  though  the  converse  statement,  "Let  Socrates  arrive,  and 
the  sparkle  appears,"  is  not  universally  true,  it  is  true  in  the  most 
famous  and  important  dialogues.  When  he  is  present,  we  have 
philosophy  plus  that  living  thrill  which  is  the  charm  of  human 
society ;  when  he  is  absent,  we  have  philosophy  alone.  Now 
would  this  difference  appear,  if  Plato  were  simply  a  poet  and 
Socrates  one  of  his  characters  ?  I  think  not ;  we  should  then  have 
the  sparkle  diffused  over  all  Plato's  works.  But  if  Plato  be  truly 
the  biographer,  the  phenomenon  is  explained ;  the  sparkle  means 
that  he  has  genuine  delight  in  a  past  reminiscence ;  the  thought 
of  Socrates  kindles  him,  because  he  really  remembers  what  Socrates 
was.  Can  we,  recognising  this,  refuse  to  admit  a  genuine  basis 
of  truth  in  what  Plato  tells  us  about  the  opinions  of  Socrates  ? 

But  further;  as  I  have  quoted  and  compared  together  two 
passages,  from  Xenophon  and  Plato  respectively,  in  which  the 
opinions  of  Socrates  on  the  Divine  Providence  are  set  forth,  so 
let  me  quote  and  compare  two  passages  from  these  respective 
authorities  in  which  the  theme  of  love  is  treated  of  in  relation 
to  Socrates ;  Xenophon  giving  the  practice,  Plato  the  theory,  of 
Socrates.  Here  first  is  Xenophon,  from  the  beginning  of  the 
fourth  book  of  the  Memorabilia : 

Nor  was  he  less  helpful  to  his  acquaintance  in  his  lighter  than  in  his 
graver  moods.  Let  us  take  as  an  example  that  saying  of  his,  so  often  on 
his  lips,  "  I  am  in  love  with  so-and-so  "  ;  and  all  the  while  it  was  obvious 
the  going  forth  of  his  soul  was  not  towards  excellence  of  body  in  the  bloom 
of  beauty,  but  rather  towards  faculties  of  the  soul  unfolding  in  virtue. 
And  these  "good  natures"  he  detected  by  certain  tokens;  a  reeidiness  to 
learn  that  to  which  the  attention  was  directed:  a  power  of  retaining  in 
the  memory'  the  lessons  learnt;  and  a  pa.ssionate  predilection  for  those 
studies  in  particular  which  servo  to  good  administration  of  a  house  or  of 
a  stat'C,  and  in  general  to  the  proper  handling  of  man  and  human  affairs. 
Such  beings,  he  maintained,  needed  only  to  be  educated  to  become  not  only 
happy  themselves  and  happy  administrators  of  their  private  households, 
but  to  be  capable  of  rendering  other  human  beings  as  states  or  individuals 
happy  also'. 

And  here  is  the  passage  from  Plato ;  it  is  from  the  Symposium, 
and  is  from  the  discourse  of  Socrates,  who  professes  to  have  heard 

^  Dakyns'  Xenophon,  vol.  in.  part  i.  p.  130. 


vn]         THE   HELLENIC   QUEST  AFTER   TRUTH  175 

the  teaching  from  Diotima,  a  wise  woman  of  Mantineia;  but 
whether  this  be  so  or  not  the  main  gist  of  it,  which  is  the  com- 
mendation of  the  love  of  beautiful  souls,  has  been  justly  made  his 
own  by  Socrates. 

He  who  would  proceed  rightly  in  this  matter  (he  says)  should  begin 
in  youth  to  turn  to  beautiful  forms ;  and  first,  if  his  instructor  guide  him 
rightly,  he  should  learn  to  love  one  such  form  only — out  of  that  he  should 
create  fair  thoughts;  and  soon  he  will  himself  perceive  that  the  beauty 
of  one  form  is  truly  related  to  the  beauty  of  another ;  and  then,  if  beauty 
in  general  is  his  pursuit,  how  foolish  he  would  be  not  to  recognise  that  the 
beauty  in  every  form  is  one  and  the  same !  And  when  he  perceives  this 
he  will  abate  his  violent  love  of  the  one,  which  he  will  despise  and  deem 
a  small  thing,  and  will  become  a  lover  of  all  beautiful  forms ;  this  will  lead 
him  on  to  consider  that  the  beauty  of  the  mind  is  more  honourable  than 
the  beauty  of  the  outward  form.  So  that  if  a  virtuous  soul  have  but  a  little 
comeliness,  he  will  be  content  to  love  and  tend  him,  and  will  search  out 
and  bring  to  the  birth  thoughts  which  may  improve  the  young,  until  his 
beloved  is  compelled  to  contemplate  and  see  the  beauty  of  institutions 
and  laws,  and  understand  that  all  is  of  one  kindred,  and  that  personal 
beauty  is  only  a  trifle ;  and  after  laws  and  institutions  he  will  lead  him  on 
to  the  sciences,  that  he  may  see  their  beauty,  being  not  like  a  servant  in 
love  with  the  beauty  of  one  youth  or  man  or  institution,  himself  a  slave 
mean  and  calculating,  but  looking  at  the  abundance  of  beauty  and  drawing 
towards  the  sea  of  beauty,  and  creating  and  beholding  many  fair  and  noble 
thoughts  and  notions  in  boundless  love  of  wisdom ;  until  at  length  he  grows 
and  waxes  strong,  and  at  last  the  vision  is  revealed  to  him  of  a  single  science, 
which  is  the  science  of  beauty  everywhere. .  .  .  Do  you  not  see  that  in  that 
communion  only,  beholding  beauty  with  the  eye  of  the  mind,  he  will  be 
able  to  bring  forth,  not  images  of  beauty,  but  realities ;  for  he  has  hold  not 
of  an  image  but  of  a  reality ;  and  bringing  forth  and  educating  true  virtue 
to  become  the  friend  of  God  and  be  immortal,  if  mortal  man  may?  Would 
that  be  an  ignoble  life^  ? 

In  that  passage  of  Plato,  the  primary  thought  is  the  same  as 
in  the  passage  of  Xenophon ;  and  in  both  passages,  it  is  the  mind 
and  practice  of  Socrates  which  is  being  set  before  us ;  in  Plato, 
more  especially  the  mind;  in  Xenophon,  more  especially  the 
practice.  It  is  true  that  Plato  infuses  into  the  subject  a  poetic 
imagery  which  is  foreign  to  Xenophon ;  and  also  he  brings  into 
clear  view  the  divine  immortal  part  of  man's  nature,  which 
Xenophon  is  here  content  to  leave  in  the  background.  But  from 
both  we  perceive  that  deep  in  the  nature  of  Socrates  a  power  of 
love  was  seated,  which  was,  as  it  could  not  help  being,  most 
attractive  to  ardent  ingenuous  souls,  especially  those  of  the  young ; 
a  power  of  love  which  was  closely  united  with  the  desire  for  clear 
intellectual  insight.     If  we  ask  how  this  power  of  love  as  shown 

1  Jowett's  Plato,  vol.  i.  pp.  526-7. 


176  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  [oh. 

in  Socrates  differs  from  that  which  we  find  commended  and  exem- 
plified in  the  pages  of  the  New  Testament,  I  think  we  must  say 
that  love  as  exhibited  by  Jesus  Christ  and  his  chief  apostles 
receives  wings  from  the  profound  pity  which  commingles  with 
it ;  there  is  a  sense  of  the  urgent  need  of  it,  without  which  it  could 
not  have  been  effective  for  redeeming  the  whole  human  race.  To 
this  Socrates  does  not  reach ;  but  we  must  not  undervalue  his 
commingling  of  love  with  the  intellectual  element,  with  his  sense 
of  the  good  of  true  understanding:  Christianity  in  all  its  early 
history  was  so  much  an  appeal  to  the  poor  and  unlearned,  that  the 
intellectual  element  is*  subordinate  in  it. 

It  will  not  be  out  of  place,  in  regard  to  the  part  of  the  character  of 
Socrates  with  which  I  am  now  dealing,  to  refer  to  a  dialogue  found 
among  those  of  Plato,  but  by  modem  critics  not  generally  held 
genuine,  the  Theages ;  genuine  or  not,  it  has  a  sentence  which  is 
worth  our  remembering.  I  mean  that  in  which  Socrates  tells 
Theages  that  he  resigns  "blessed  and  honourable  sciences"  to  men 
likeProdicus  and  Gorgias,  and  only  claims  for  himself  one  small  piece 
of  knowledge,  the  Art  of  Love.  No  one  who  studies  either  Plato 
or  Xenophonwill  doubt  that  Socrates  was  justified  in  this  claim. 

Speaking  generally,  one  would  say  that  Xenophon  gives  us 
a  greater  proportion  of  historic  accuracy  as  regards  Socrates  than 
Plato  does.  But  the  difference  is  not  so  great  as  is  generally 
supposed ;  and  in  one  important  work,  the  Apology,  Plato  is  more 
exact  than  Xenophon.  It  is  not  wonderful  that  it  should  be  so, 
for  Plato  was  present  at  the  trial  of  Socrates^,  whereas  Xenophon 
at  the  time  was  in  Asia,  having  just  returned  from  the  Cyreian 
expedition;  his  knowledge  on  this  point  was  second  hand.  In 
most  matters  respecting  the  trial,  however,  our  two  authorities 
are  remarkably  coincident.  In  both,  a  considerable  space  is 
taken  up  with  a  personal  colloquy  between  Socrates  and  his  accuser 
Meletus  (the  other  two  accusers,  Anytus  and  Lycon,  do  not  enter 
in) ;  in  both,  Socrates  relates  the  question  which  Chaerephon  put 
to  the  Delphic  oracle,  and  the  answer  given  by  the  oracle ;  in 
both,  Socrates  refers  to  the  "divine  sign"  which  was  wont  to 
restrain  him  from  wrong  courses ;  in  both,  he  is  careless  about 
conciliating  his  judges,  and  addresses  to  them  home  truths,  to 
which  his  hearers  do  not  always  listen  with  placidity;  in  both, 
he  declares  that  death  to  him  is  not  a  calamity.  In  both,  when 
he  has  been  declared  guilty,  and  is  asked  to  name  a  penalty  as 
an  alternative  to  that  penalty  of  death  which  Meletus  proposed, 

*  See  Plato's  Apology  of  Socrates,  pp.  34  a,  38  b. 


VII]         THE   HELLENIC   QUEST  AFTER  TRUTH  177 

he  refuses  to  name  any  penalty ;  though  it  is  true  that  in  Plato's 
account  he  relaxes  in  the  end  owing  to  the  entreaties  of  his  friends, 
and  proposes  for  himself  a  fine  of  thirty  minse,  his  friends  having 
offered  to  pay  this  for  him.  In  both  accounts,  he  addresses  the 
audience  after  he  has  been  condemned  to  death,  and  says  he  has 
been  unjustly  condemned,  and  refers  to  the  case  of  the  hero 
Palamedes  as  in  like  manner  unjustly  condemned  in  the  olden 
time. 

Nor  is  there  less  correspondence  between  Plato  and  Xenophon 
as  respects  the  surroundings  of  the  trial,  than  in  the  trial  itself. 
In  both,  the  fact  is  mentioned  that  the  death  was  delayed  for 
many  days  (a  month,  in  fact)  in  consequence  of  the  annual  embassy 
to  Delos  coinciding  with  his  condemnation ;  for  until  the  embassy 
returned  from  its  voyage,  it  was  the  custom  of  the  Athenians  to 
refrain  from  putting  any  one  to  death.  In  both,  the  wish  of  the 
friends  of  Socrates  that  he  should  escape  out  of  prison,  and  his 
refusal  to  do  so,  are  mentioned.  It  is  worth  notice  again,  that 
of  seven  persons  whom  Xenophon  specially  names  as  true  and 
honourable  friends  of  Socrates,  five  (namely  Crito,  Hermogenes, 
Simmias,  Cebes,  Phsedondes)  are  mentioned  by  Plato  as  present 
at  the  death  of  Socrates ;  the  sixth,  Chserecrates,  is  mentioned  by 
Plato  (under  the  title  of  the  brother  of  Chserephon)  as  present  at 
the  trial ;  while  the  seventh,  Chaerephon  himself,  had  died  shortly 
before  the  trial.  With  respect  to  another  follower  of  Socrates, 
ApoUodorus,  it  is  remarkable  how  similar  his  character  is  as 
described  by  Plato  and  by  Xenophon.  According  to  Plato, 
ApoUodorus  was  the  first  and  most  vehement  of  the  friends  of 
Socrates  in  lamentation,  when  Socrates  had  drunk  the  poison 
handed  him  by  the  gaoler ;  while  Xenophon  records  this  anecdote 
about  him : 

Now  there  was  present  a  certain  ApoUodorus,  who  was  an  enthvisiastic 
lover  of  the  master,  but  for  the  rest  a  simple-minded  man.  He  exclaimed 
very  innocently,  "But  the  hardest  thing  of  all  to  bear,  Socrates,  is  to  see 
you  put  to  death  unjustly." — Whereupon  Socrates,  it  is  said,  gently  stroked 
the  young  man's  head;  "Would  you  have  been  better  pleased,  my  dear 
one,  to  see  me  put  to  death  for  some  just  reason  rather  than  unjustly  ? " 
and  as  he  spoke  he  smiled  tenderly^. 

The  action  of  Socrates  in  stroking  the  head  of  ApoUodorus 
is  paralleled  by  a  similar  action  of  his  towards  Phsedo,  recorded  by 
Plato  {Phcedo,  p.  89  b). 

In  the  midst  of  this  great  and  various  agreement  between 

1  Dakyn's  Xenophon,  vol.  m.  part  i.  pp.  193^. 
M.  D.  A.  12 


178  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  [OH. 

Xenophon  and  Plato  as  respects  the  trial  and  death  of  Socrates, 
there  are  two  points  in  which  our  authorities  difiFer ;  and  in  both, 
as  I  have  said,  the  preference  must  be  given  to  Plato.  Xenophon 
makes  Socrates  in  his  defence  appeal  directly  to  his  practice  of 
sacrificing  on  the  public  altars.  We  have  reason  to  say  that 
Socrates  did  this  as  a  fact,  but  Plato  does  not  make  him  defend 
himself  by  mentioning  it,  and  the  tone  of  his  defence  in  Plato  is 
not  altogether  consistent  with  his  having  mentioned  it.  It  is 
evident,  I  think,  that  Socrates  felt  instinctively  a  certain  difference 
between  the  temper  of  his  own  religious  worship  and  that  of 
ordinary  Athenians ;  which  difference  Xenophon  hardly  appreci- 
ated, and  still  less  would  have  wished  to  mention.  The  other 
point  in  which  Plato  and  Xenophon  are  inconsistent  with  each 
other  is  one  of  greater  importance.  The  reader  will  remember 
that  I  quoted  the  two  forms  in  which  the  saying  of  the  Delphic 
oracle  respecting  Socrates  is  given;  Plato  putting  it  thus,  that 
"no  one  was  wiser  than  Socrates"  ;  Xenophon  more  expansively 
thus,  "  that  there  was  no  human  being  more  liberal,  or  more 
upright,  or  more  temperate  than  Socrates."  Now  even  as  a 
matter  of  mere  form,  the  brevity  of  Plato  is  more  akin  to  the 
character  of  the  oracle  than  the  effusiveness  of  Xenophon ;  but 
the  difference  reaches  much  beyond  mere  form.  According  to 
Xenophon,  the  oracle  is  simply  accepted  by  Socrates,  and  there 
is  an  end  of  it ;  but  according  to  Plato,  the  oracular  response  is 
interpretative  of  the  whole  public  career  of  Socrates,  and  for  this 
very  reason,  that  Socrates  did  not  lightly  or  easily  accept  it. 
He  wondered  at  the  oracle  having  said  that  no  man  was  wiser 
than  he ;  till  at  last  he  hit  upon  the  explanation,  that  all  men 
were  ignorant  of  the  things  which  most  concerned  them,  and  he 
no  less  than  others ;  but  that  he  had  just  this  little  advantage 
over  others,  that  he  knew  himself  to  be  ignorant,  whereas  others 
thought  themselves  wise.  I  know  not  whether  the  exquisite 
grace  with  which  Socrates  expounds  this  thesis,  and  relates  how 
he  made  himself  unpopular  by  vindicating  the  correctness  of 
the  oracle  as  to  the  ignorance  under  which  all  men  were  labouring, 
be  a  true  fact  ;  Plato  was  an  exquisite  artist,  and  something  may 
have  been  added  by  him  to  Socrates  as  regards  beauty  of  style ; 
but  surely  is  it  in  substance  the  true  Socrates  we  are  licaring, 
when  we  read  this  explanation  of  his  remarkable  career.  It  does 
explain  Socrates  to  us ;  and  nothing  else  does  ade((uately  explain 
him.  Surely  this  tells  in  favour  of  Plato  as  a  truthful  biographer. 
I  venture  to  say,  moreover,  that  the  single  really  untenable 


vn]         THE  HELLENIC  QUEST  AFTER  TRUTH  179 

argument  which  Socrates  (according  to  Plato)  advanced  in  his 
own  defence — the  argument  that  he  could  not  wilfully  have 
taught  men  to  do  injury  to  others,  because  then  he  would  be  teach- 
ing them  to  do  injury  to  himself — has  a  real  Socratic  ring  about 
it:  Socrates  did  not  strengthen  his  case  by  using  it,  but  it  fell 
in  with  the  customary  tenor  of  his  thoughts,  and  we  must  beheve 
that  he  did  say  this. 

If  then  the  Apology  of  Socrates  as  given  by  Plato  is  substantially 
a  true  and  adequate  account  of  what  Socrates  said  in  his  own 
defence  at  his  trial,  must  we  not  hold  that  the  dialogue  which 
immediately  follows  the  Apology,  the  Crito,  is  authentic  also ; 
in  which  the  noble  argument  is  given,  by  virtue  of  which  Socrates 
rejected  the  suggestion  made  to  him,  that  he  should  escape  from 
prison,  and  so  save  his  hfe  ?  (We  must  remember  that  it  is  not 
only  Plato,  but  Xenophon,  who  tells  us  that  he  rejected  this 
suggestion.)  The  argument  is  essentially  this,  that  a  man  should 
in  aU  lawful  things  obey  cheerfully  the  commands  of  his  country, 
even  though  those  commands  lead  him  to  his  death. 

And  now  I  come  to  that  Platonic  dialogue  which  follows  in 
due  sequence  after  the  Apology  and  the  Crito — namely,  the 
Phsedo — in  which  the  account  of  the  death  of  Socrates  is  given. 
Of  that  scene  Plato  was  not  himself  a  witness ;  his  own  illness 
was  the  cause  which  kept  him  away ;  but  it  is  plain  that  he  had  the 
greatest  possible  interest  in  knowing  what  happened,  and  there 
were  many  who  were  able  to  inform  him.  Are  we  to  disbelieve 
him  when  he  says  that  Socrates  spent  the  last  day  of  his  life  in 
discussing  with  his  friends  the  question  of  the  soul's  immortahty  ? 
I  know  not  on  what  ground  we  should  disbelieve  it.  The  occasion 
was  so  solemn  as  to  constitute  a  demand  on  Plato  that  he  should 
say  nothing  but  what  was  effectively  true ;  he  might  and  would 
put  the  truth  in  his  own  language,  no  doubt,  but  truth  ought  to 
be  there,  and  I  do  not  doubt  that  there  is  truth  in  what  Plato 
records  in  the  Phaedo.  Moreover,  I  have  already  spent  much 
pains  in  vindicating  the  truth  of  a  particular  part  of  the  Phsedo, 
that  namely  in  which  Socrates  is  represented  as  expressing  his  keen 
desire  to  perceive  the  divine  goodness  in  the  facts  of  the  phenomenal 
universe  as  known  to  us.  If  in  this  part  of  the  dialogue  Plato  is 
narrating  true  facts,  it  lends  probability  to  the  truthfulness  of 
the  rest.  Let  me  then  give  as  briefly  as  possible  the  arguments  for 
the  immortality  of  the  soul  as  stated  in  the  Phsedo ;  they  are  in 
the  main  three  ;  and  the  first  of  the  three  is  one  eminently  natural 
for  Socrates,  in  the  position  in  which  he  then  was,  to  have  put 

12—2 


180  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [oh. 

forward.  It  is  an  argument  resting  on  the  feeling  that  the  life 
of  a  true  philosopher  must  always  be  a  preparation  for  death, 
or  in  other  words  a  preparation  for  the  time  when  the  soul  shall 
be  separated  from  the  body.  The  soul  is  regarded  as  superior  to 
the  body,  and  as  having  in  this  Ufe  the  duty  of  governing  the  body ; 
and  the  thought  is,  that  if  the  soul  discharges  its  duty  of  governing 
the  body  well,  it  becomes  fitted  for  higher  station  afterwards. 
This  argument  is  begun  in  the  ninth  chapter  of  the  dialogue,  and 
then,  without  being  continuously  dwelt  upon,  it  is  evidently  in 
the  thoughts  of  the  speaker,  and  finds  its  natural  termination  in 
the  32nd,  33rd,  and  34th  chapters.  The  feeling  that  bodily 
pleasures  are  unworthy  is  in  some  parts  of  the  argument  too  pre- 
ponderant ;  but  was  that  an  unnatural  feeling  in  Socrates  immedi- 
ately before  his  death  ?  But  meanwhile,  in  the  middle  of  this 
argument,  the  second  of  the  three  arguments  of  which  I  spoke  is 
interjected ;  it  is  in  fact  suggested  by  one  of  the  friends  of  Socrates 
who  is  present,  Cebes ;  but  he  prefaces  it  by  saying  that  Socrates 
is  often  accustomed  to  speak  of  the  thesis  on  which  the  argument 
rests.  That  thesis  is,  that  our  knowledge,  in  its  leading  principles, 
is  essentially  remembrance ;  that  we  had  it  before  we  were  born 
into  this  present  Life.  This  implies  that  we  lived  in  an  antecedent 
life  ;  and  if  we  lived  in  an  antecedent  life,  is  that  not  an  argument 
that  we  shall  also  live  in  a  future  life  ? 

Now  in  modem  times  this  argument  will  not,  I  think,  be 
received  with  as  much  respect  as  the  first  argument ;  for  the  duty 
of  educating  the  soul  in  virtue  cannot  be  ignored,  and  the  thought 
that  it  is  being  educated  for  responsibilities  that  will  be  realised 
after  death  will  not  be  derided,  at  any  rate  ;  whereas  the  thought 
of  the  soul's  preexistence  is  hardly  seriously  entertained  in  modern 
European  thought.  Moreover,  this  second  argument  is  generally 
thought  of  as  distinctly  Platonic,  not  Socratic.  Nevertheless 
(to  take  the  last  point  first)  I  do  not  believe  that  Plato  would 
have  put  into  the  mouth  of  Cebes  the  statement  that  Socrates 
"often"  referred  to  the  doctrine  that  the  soul  remembered  prin- 
ciples learnt  in  a  state  of  previous  existence  if  that  doctrine  had 
never  been  propounded  by  Socrates.  As  to  the  doctrine  itself, 
it  is  in  a  very  mysterious  region,  and  what  I  have  to  say  about 
it  had  better  be  postponed  until  I  have  stated  the  third  argument 
for  immortality  given  in  the  Phsedo. 

That  third  argument  is  elaborated  at  length  in  the  dialogue, 
but  the  upshot  of  it,  which  is  reached  at  the  close  of  the  r)4th 
chapter,  may  be  put  into  very  brief  compass,  and  it  is  this.     The 


VII]         THE  HELLENIC  QUEST  AFTER  TRUTH  181 

question  is  asked :  "What  is  that,  the  presence  of  which  impHes 
that  the  body  is  aUve ? "  and  the  answer  given  is,  "It  is  the  soul." 
"Therefore,"  the  inference  is  drawn,  "the  soul  is  essentially  hfe; 
death  is  its  opposite;    therefore  the  soul  is  immortal." 

Of  aU  three  arguments  it  may  be  said  (and  especially  it  may 
be  said  of  the  first  of  the  three)  that  though  they  do  not  produce 
conviction,  neither  are  they  to  be  despised.  They  remain  in  our 
thoughts,  though  not  as  proofs  of  what  is,  yet  as  indications  of 
what  may  be.  It  is  an  "honourable  risk"  to  think  in  this  way; 
this  is  the  phrase  by  which  Socrates  (in  the  63rd  chapter  of  the 
Phaedo)  certainly  characterises  a  part  of  the  argument,  and  I  think 
he  means  to  characterise  the  whole  of  it  thus.  The  proof  must 
come  later,  if  at  all ;  but  meanwhile,  indications  of  truth  are 
welcome.  This  is  the  true  Socratic  position ;  it  is  foreshadowed 
in  the  Apology ;  and  though  in  the  Apology  the  side  of  doubt 
is  more  distinctly  represented  than  in  the  Phsedo,  it  is  only  natural 
that  a  courageous  spirit  should  devote  his  last  words  to  the  infusion 
of  hope  into  those  who  hear  him. 

Thus,  while  the  form  of  the  arguments  for  immortahty  given 
in  the  Phaedo  is  due  to  Plato,  the  underlying  thought  certainly 
belongs  to  Socrates;  and  the  objections  (not  by  any  means  idle 
or  unreasonable)  which  Simmias  and  Cebes  raise  to  the  arguments 
of  Socrates  may  be  accepted  as  historical  facts,  as  weU  as  (sub- 
stantially) the  repHes  which  Socrates  makes  to  them.  There  is 
no  reason  why  the  Socratic  authorship  should  not  be  accepted 
in  the  case  of  the  argument  for  preexistence,  out  of  which  im- 
mortality follows  as  a  sequel,  as  much  as  in  respect  of  the  other 
arguments.  So  mysterious  a  theme  cannot  be  pursued  into 
details ;  but  in  itself  the  argument  is  neither  unreasonable,  nor 
is  the  premiss  on  which  it  rests — the  congenital  possession  by 
human  beings  of  faculties  in  the  germ — at  all  disputable;  it  is 
an  argument  weU  within  the  range  of  Socrates,  and  should  be 
accepted  as  his.  Socrates  may  easily  have  beUeved,  and  we  may 
believe  too,  that  our  real  existence  did  not  begin  with  our  physical 
conception  and  birth.  But  on  such  a  subject  we  ought  not  to  be 
too  free  with  our  imaginations. 

Does  Xenophon  support  Plato  in  his  account  of  the  views 
of  Socrates  respecting  immortality  ?  Not  by  his  direct  evidence ; 
and  it  is  quite  possible  that  he  was  less  acquainted  with  this  side 
of  the  mind  of  Socrates  than  Plato  was.  But  yet,  when  we  consider 
the  narrative  of  the  death  of  Cyrus  the  elder,  as  given  by  Xenophon 
in  his  Cyropcedia,  we  perceive  that  Cyrus  is  represented  as  holding 


182  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [ch. 

just  that  mixture  of  belief  with  a  shade  of  doubt  respecting  a 
future  life  which  is  avowed  by  Socrates  in  his  Apology  (as  given 
by  Plato) ;  and  we  do  probably  see  in  this  the  Socratic  influence 
on  Xenophon^. 

I  must  not  dwell  on  the  other  Platonic  dialogues  with  anything 
like  that  fullness  with  which  I  have  treated  of  the  Phaedo ;  but  it 
will  be  proper  to  mention  some  notable  instances  in  which  the 
true  Socrates  is  discernible  in  Plato.  We  may  see  him  in  the  moral 
maxims,  which  are  sometimes  very  profound.  Take,  for  instance, 
those  which  we  find  in  the  Gorgias ;  that  "  he  who  injures  another, 
injures  himself  more"  ;  that  "  to  suffer  wrong  is  better  than  to  do 
wrong  "  ;  that  he  who  has  done  wrong  ought  to  seek,  and  not  to 
avoid,  the  just  punishment,  for  his  own  good.  Take,  again,  the 
fine  definition  of  courage  in  the  Republic,  as  the  just  sentiment 
respecting  things  which  ought  to  be  feared  and  things  which  ought 
not  to  be  feared.  Most  of  all,  take  the  saying  in  the  Crito,  that  it 
is  wrong  to  revenge  ourselves  upon  those  who  have  injured  us.  It 
has  sometimes  been  thought  that  this  saying  is  not  authentic,  owing 
to  its  contrast  with  the  words  which  Xenophon  reports  Socrates 
to  have  used  in  his  conversation  with  Critobulus  {Memorabilia, 
book  II.),  that  "a  man's  virtue  is  to  excel  his  friends  in  kindness 
and  his  foes  in  hostility " ;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that 
Socrates  was  more  likely  to  express  his  truest  and  deepest  feelings 
during  the  last  days  of  his  life  (to  which  period  the  Crito  belongs) 
than  in  an  accidental  expression  uttered  years  before,  when  he 
might  not  unnaturally  have  spoken  in  the  manner  of  ordinary 
Greek  feeling.  Nor  can  we  say  that  it  was  impossible  for  Xenophon 
to  put  an  ordinary  Greek  sentiment  into  the  mouth  of  Socrates 
carelessly  and  by  mere  accident ;  whereas  the  saying  in  the  Crito 
could  not  possibly  have  slipped  in  by  accident. 

I  attribute  the  above  maxims,  recorded  by  Plato  as  spoken 
by  Socrates,  truly  to  Socrates;  and  for  this  reason,  that  Socrates 
was  before  everything  a  moralist,  and  original  in  his  moral  teaching. 
Testimony  and  probability  favour  an  identical  conclusion  here. 
It  will  be  of  interest  to  compare  his  morality,  in  the  most  formal 
statement  of  it,  with  an  analogous  statement  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment. The  Socratic  division  of  virtue  (to  judge  by  Plato  and  in 
the  main  also  by  Xenophon)  was  fourfold :  courage,  temperance, 
justice,  and  wisdom,  are  the  four  sustaining  pillars  of  righteous 

*  Jowctt  is,  though  rathiT  doubtfully,  of  this  opinion  (sec  the  close  of  his  introduc- 
tion to  the  Pha>do);  and  H.  (i.  Dakyns  has  noticp<l  the  probability  that  Xenophon  had 
Socrates  in  his  thoughts  when  writing  the  story  which  appears  in  book  iii.  chap.  1, 
§§  38-40,  of  the  Cyropadxa. 


vn]         THE  HELLENIC   QUEST  AFTER  TRUTH  183 

conduct.     But  the  New  Testament  division  of  virtue,  as  set  forth 
by  the  apostle  Paul,  is  threefold;    faith,  hope,  and  love  are  its 
constituents.     Now  the  first  three  of  the  Socratic  virtues,  though 
not  the  same  as  the  three  Pauline  virtues,  have  yet  an  analogy 
to  them ;    and  in  this  comparison  the  Pauline  virtues  have  the 
superiority.     He  who  has  faith,  has  something  which  lies  at  the 
root  of  courage,  and  administers  to  courage.     Temperance  and 
hope  are  not  indeed  the  same ;    but  what  Paul  meant  by  hope, 
the  steady  anticipation  of  future  good  as  ordained  for  men  by 
God,  is  the  greatest  cause  of  temperance  in  present  enjoyments. 
Finally,  love  is  the  soil  on  which  a  just  treatment  of  our  fellow-men 
naturally   grows.     In   these   important  points.  Christian  virtue 
has  a  depth  to  which  the  Socratic  philosophy  does  not  attain. 
But  what  is  to  be  said  of  the  fourth  Socratic  virtue,  "wisdom" 
or   "insight"    {aocpla,  ^p6vr]ai.<;)'^     It  cannot  be   identified  with 
any    of    the    other   virtues,    either   in   the    Socratic    or   in    the  ■., 
Pauhne  scale ;    it  expresses  purposive  action  in  a  way  in  which  ( 
the   other   virtues   do   not   express   it.     Purpose  is  one  of  the  5 
cardinal  qualities  of  man ;  and  I  cannot  but  think  that  "wisdom,"  >' 
in  the  Socratic  sense,  has  a  scope  to  which  early  Christian  sentiment  / 
hardly  did  justice ;    it  means  the  slow  building  up  of  a  happy  ) 
human  society ;   and  the  problem,  how  to  effect  this,  received  but   ; 
imperfect  attention  in  early  Christian  times.     On  the  other  hand,   - 
Socrates  did  no  doubt  fall  into  the  error  of  making  the  study  of 
virtue  too  much  an  affair  of  reasoning  (which  is  the  opposite  error 
from   that   of  the  early   Christians).     In  his  personal  conduct, 
a  divine  instinct,  warning  him  when  he  was  about  to  do  wrong, 
continually  attended  upon  him,  as  he  tells  us ;    but  he  ought  to 
have  felt  that  for  others  also  the  way  of  virtue  lay  in  trusting 
such  an  instinct ;    whereas  in  his  instructions  to  others,  he  com- 
mended rather  the  intellectual  search  after  virtue,  which  by  itself 
is  a  comparatively  crude  method,  although  of  course  one  that  has 
its  value,  as  I  have  just  been  saying.     But  the  over-valuation  of 
knowledge  was  (if  I  may  use  an  old  metaphor)  the  heel  of  Achilles  ^ 
in  his  spiritual  framework. 

Neither  my  subject,  nor  the  limits  of  this  work,  permit  me 
to  enter  in  detail  upon  the  interesting  question  how  far  the  real 
Socratic  element  exists  in  those  other  Platonic  dialogues  in  which 
Socrates  is  the  chief  speaker ;  but  I  may  say  briefly  that  I  believe 
the  first  four  books  of  the  Republic  to  contain  a  great  deal  of  the 
real  thought  of  Socrates ;  and  I  incline  to  think  that  the  early 
chapters  of  the  Parmenides,  in  which  Socrates  as  a  youthful 


184  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [oh. 

arguer  is  represented  as  yielding  to  the  veteran  philosopher 
(needlessly  in  my  opinion),  contain  a  reminiscence  of  a  true 
historic  fact. 

No  accoimt  of  Socrates,  however  brief,  ought  to  omit  to  mention 
the  consistent  courage  which  he  displayed  as  a  man  (apart  from 
his  energy  as  a  thinker),  both  when  employed  in  military  service, 
and  still  more  when  resisting  unjust  commands  of  oligarchs  and 
outcries  of  the  Athenian  populace ;  and  whether  we  regard  him 
as  a  philosopher  or  as  a  man,  we  may  read  sympathetically  these 
words,  with  which  Plato,  after  narrating  his  death,  characterises 
him: 

Such  w«w  the  end,  Echecrates,  of  our  friend,  whom  I  may  truly  call 
the  wisest,  and  justest,  and  best,  of  all  the  men  whom  I  have  ever  known. 

These,  the  concluding  words  of  the  Phaedo,  might  be  fully 
paralleled  from  Xenophon  also. 

I  have  dwelt  at  length  on  the  teaching  of  Socrates,  because 
though  in  a  certain  way  he  is  always  recognised  as  the  central 
point  of  the  Greek  spiritual  development,  it  has  been  too  common 
with  critics  to  regard  him  as  a  mere  questioner  and  arguer,  a 
sharpener  of  the  intellect  rather  than  an  implanter  of  moral  truth 
in  the  minds  of  men.  But  his  real  influence  lay  in  the  moral 
feeling  which  he  inspired,  and  in  the  unerring  instinct  by  which 
he  brought  moral  feeling  into  alliance  with  religious  devotion ; 
these  are  qualities  which  transcend  the  imaginative  brilliancy  of 
Plato,  and  the  large  knowledge  of  Aristotle. 

As  to  the  physical  philosophers  who  came  before  Socrates, 
they,  though  not  equal  to  him,  must  be  commended  for  the  interest 
which  they  showed  in  the  visible  universe ;  and  while  men  like 
Thales  and  Leucippus  have  come  down  to  us  rather  as  speculative 
theorists  than  as  scientific  observers,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
a  great  deal  of  exact  observation  was  being  carried  on  in  Greece 
during  the  fifth  century  before  Christ,  which  bore  fruit  in  after 
time.  The  names  of  the  observers  have  for  the  most  part  been 
forgotten  ;  but  the  name  of  Metoti  survives.  He  was  the  reformer 
of  the  calendar  at  Athens;  and  the  golden  number  19,  which 
coordinates  the  revolutions  of  the  sun  and  moon,  and  which  has 
served  ecclesiastical  purposes  in  Christian  times,  was  by  him 
discovered.  The  search  after  intellectual  truth  was  at  all  times 
characteristic  of  the  Hellenic  mind ;  the  distinction  of  Socrates 
was  that,  inheriting  this  characteristic,  he  applied  it  to  the  most 
important  of  all  subjects,  the  determination  of  the  conduct  of 
men  with  a  view  to  the  increase  of  life  and  happiness. 


vn]         THE   HELLENIC   QUEST  AFTER   TRUTH  185 

This  most  important  quest  was  taken  up,  after  the  death  of 
Socrates,  by  his  pupil,  Plato,  and  by  the  pupil  of  Plato,  Aristotle. 
To  these  great  names  I  must  do  no  dishonour,  and  yet  I  cannot 
adequately  treat  of  them  here ;  for  Plato  to  some  extent,  and 
Aristotle  much  more,  entered  upon  themes  of  general  interest, 
which  have  only  an  indirect  connexion  with  the  vital  springs  of 
human  nature,  and  by  consequence  with  history. 

In  ethics  and  religion,  Plato  took  up  the  Socratic  position, 
systematised  it,  illustrated  it,  expanded  it.  He  was  a  literary 
artist,  which  Socrates  was  not;  he  was  a  systematiser,  which 
Socrates  was  not;  he  had  poetic  imaginations  which  we  can 
hardly  attribute  to  Socrates.  Yet  the  essential  character  of 
Plato's  philosophy  was  due  to  Socrates;  the  feeling  that  our 
deepest  interest  is  due  to  mankind,  that  the  human  soul  and 
character  deserve  our  careful  study  beyond  anything  else  in 
the  world,  and  that  man  has  received  his  faculties  and  bodily 
frame  from  a  divine  source  and  is  dependent  on  the  divine  help 
for  his  well-being ;  all  this  is  the  root  of  the  philosophy  of  Plato, 
because  it  had  been  the  root  of  the  philosophy  of  Socrates.  Even 
the  idealism  of  Plato  sprung  out  of  the  germ  which  Socrates  had 
sown ;  though  the  creative  use  which  Plato  makes  of  the  cardinal 
spiritual  ideas,  their  function  in  the  mind  of  God  to  create  this 
world  which  we  see  and  feel,  goes  beyond  anything  which  Socrates 
conceived  in  this  line,  and  belongs  to  Plato  alone. 

If  Plato  is  sometimes  rather  tiresome  in  the  minuteness  and 
length  of  his  argumentation,  he  makes  up  for  this  by  the  splendour 
of  his  delineation  in  the  final  result.  How,  for  instance,  is  the 
reader  amazed  and  electrified  by  the  parable  with  which  the 
seventh  book  of  the  Republic  commences ;  that  parable,  according 
to  which  we  of  human  kind  are  here  on  earth  as  in  a  dark  cavernous 
prison,  seeing  only  shadows  of  truths  and  not  the  realities  them- 
selves, our  true  Ufe  being  in  the  presence  of  the  eternal  Good, 
from  which  we  have  been  banished,  but  to  which  we  may  hope  to 
reascend!  When  we  look  into  the  meaning  of  this  parable,  we 
perceive  that  it  is  just  what  Socrates  in  his  Apology  says  in  plain 
prose,  that  all  men  (and  he  includes  himself  in  the  saying)  were 
ignorant  of  the  things  which  most  concerned  them.  But  Plato 
has  given  a  new  vividness  to  that  saying;  he  makes  us  feel  the 
tragic  significance  of  the  position  of  man  upon  the  earth ;  we 
tremble  as  we  realise  it,  and  yet  are  partly  relieved  by  seeing  in 
the  distance  those  divine  lights,  which  are  our  native  possession, 
if  we  can  only  attain  to  them. 


186  ANCIENT   RELIGION:  [oh. 

All  through  the  Republic  Plato  is  on  the  strain  to  express  the 
whole  of  life,  individual  and  social ;  to  express  it  as  it  should  be, 
if  men  had  attained  perfection ;  to  express  it  as  divine,  law-abiding 
and  happy.  Unlike  Socrates,  he  delights  in  pressing  theories  to 
their  conclusions.  In  so  great  an  efifort,  carried  out  with  such 
precision  of  detail,  and  with  an  unequalled  audacity  of  reasoning, 
there  were  sure  to  be  errors  in  the  execution ;  and  errors  there 
are,  and  one  of  them  is  a  very  great  error.  Three  I  reckon  in 
all,  in  this  masterpiece  ;  three  errors  that  are  more  than  incidental, 
and  seriously  affect  our  estimate  of  the  whole.  The  first  error 
is  the  absolute  condemnation  of  poetry ;  and  we  see  in  the  Apology 
that  Socrates  was  not  very  favourable  to  poetry ;  one  must  surely 
see  the  Socratic  influence  here.  But  there  is  great  tenderness 
mixed  with  the  condemnation ;  and  the  error  (whether  of  Plato 
or  of  Socrates)  was  not  likely  to  produce  any  diminution  of  the 
poetic  vein  in  the  actual  world.  Outside  the  Apology  and  the 
Republic,  the  brief  but  very  charming  dialogue  of  the  Ion  is  well 
worth  reading  on  this  question;  the  rhapsodist  (or  reciter  of 
poetry)  is  treated  there  with  gentle  satire,  but  with  much  respect. 
The  great  amount  of  genuine  human  experience  and  human  feeling 
enshrined  in  poetry  is  of  course  its  true  and  legitimate  defence. 

The  second  error  in  the  Republic  is  evidently  due  to  those 
Pythagorean  philosophers  by  whom  Plato  was  in  some  respects 
so  much  influenced.  It  is  this.  After  the  splendid  passage  at 
the  beginning  of  the  seventh  book,  to  which  I  have  just  been 
referring,  in  which  the  need  of  mankind  to  ascend  out  of  their 
present  darkness  into  the  divine  light  is  set  forth,  the  question 
is  asked,  What  form  of  knowledge  constitutes  the  first  step  in 
our  progress  towards  the  heavenly  hght?  and  the  answer  is, 
Arithmetic.  That  is  surely  a  fantastic  answer ;  but  we  have  to 
remember  the  transcendental  aspect  in  which  Pythagoras  surveyed 
the  whole  subject  of  number. 

But  the  most  extraordinary  of  all  the  errors  in  the  Republic 
is  that  in  the  fifth  book,  intermediate  between  the  two  already 
mentioned.  I  need  hardly  say  that  I  am  referring  to  the  scheme 
by  which  the  leading  class  in  the  State,  the  "Guardians,"  are  to 
have  their  wives  in  common,  and  their  children  in  consequence 
common  also  ;  precaution  being  taken  that  no  parent,  either  father 
or  mother,  shall  know  which  are  his  or  her  individual  children  ;  it 
being  added  that  the  inferior  or  unhealthy  children  are  not  to  be 
allowed  to  live.  The  whole  socialistic  scheme,  of  which  the  above 
provision  is  a  part,  is  beyond  the  scope  of  my  present  argument ; 


vn]         THE  HELLENIC   QUEST  AFTER  TRUTH  187 

perhaps  it  may  be  said  briefly  that  the  spirit  of  it  is  superior  to 
the  form  of  it.  But  with  respect  to  the  project  of  a  community 
of  wives  and  children,  so  entirely  does  it  trample  on  natural  feeling, 
that  we  can  but  echo  the  condemnation  which  has  been  expressed 
by  every  writer  who  has  had  occasion  to  mention  it,  from  Aristotle^ 
downwards.  How  shall  we  pardon  Plato  for  such  a  travesty  of 
morality?  Let  us  pardon  him  by  remembering  first  that,  if  he 
had  never  been  so  audaciously  wrong,  it  is  not  likely  that  he  would 
ever  have  been  so  brilliantly  right  as  he  was  sometimes.  But 
still  more  may  we  pardon  him  if  we  remember  that  in  his  last  and 
most  elaborate  treatise,  the  Laws,  his  view  of  marriage  differs 
but  little  from  the  Christian  view;  in  its  main  compass  I  mean, 
apart  from  details;  though  even  in  the  Laws  the  spiritual  side 
of  wedded  love  is  not  valued  highly  enough.  But  the  intrinsic 
equality  of  the  sexes  is  maintained  by  Plato  in  a  manner  rare 
among  ancient  writers.  In  connexion  with  this  whole  subject 
of  sexual  relations  it  should  be  said  that  both  Socrates  and  Plato 
reprobate  the  sexual  connexion  of  men  with  men,  not  indeed 
with  the  severity  with  which  the  Bible  treats  it,  but  distinctly. 
(See  Plato's  Republic,  in.  p.  403  and  Laws,YHi.  p.  841 ;  and  compare 
various  passages  in  the  Memorabilia  of  Xenophon.) 

The  defects  of  Plato's  two  most  elaborate  treatises,  the  Republic 
and  the  Laws  (in  which  latter  treatise  Socrates  does  not  appear) 
are  eminently  the  defects  of  a  theorist.  He  was  a  theorist  in  quite 
a  different  sense  from  that  in  which  either  Socrates  or  Aristotle 
was  so ;  that  is  to  say,  he  delighted  in  filling  in  his  theories,  and 
rounding  them  off,  so  that  they  might  appear  complete  and  be 
felt  to  be  attractive  by  the  reader.  This  procedure  was  highly 
artistic  but  not  scientific.  It  may  at  first  sight  appear  as  if  Plato 
were  more  of  a  physicist  than  Socrates,  for  the  Timceus  (in  which 
Socrates  though  present  is  not  the  chief  speaker)  is  an  attempt  to 
explain  the  origin  of  the  physical  universe.  But  the  attempt, 
whatever  its  value,  is  so  distinctly  not  on  the  lines  of  observation 
and  experience  through  the  senses,  that  we  cannot  recognise  Plato 
as  in  the  very  least  a  forerunner  of  the  physical  science  of  modern 
times. 

Whatever  the  faults  of  those  two  dialogues,  the  Republic  and 
the  Laws,  no  reader  of  them  can  fail  to  be  struck  by  the  moral 

^  Aristotle  in  the  second  book  of  the  Politics  speaks  as  if  the  whole  scheme 
of  a  community  of  wives  and  children  had  emanated  from  Socrates.  This  is 
not  at  all  likely,  in  the  detail  which  the  scheme  reaches ;  though  we  are  not  entitled 
to  say  that  Socrates  may  not  have  given  a  hint  which  was  elaborated  by  Plato.  But 
Aristotle  would  seem  to  have  avoided  attacking  his  own  master,  Plato,  with  an  energy 
which  he  did  not  mind  using  towards  Socrates. 


188  ANCIENT    RELIGION:  [oh. 

and  religious  feeling,  and  by  the  deep  interest  in  the  welfare  of 
society,  which  those  works  display.  Plato  remains  to  us  one  of 
the  most  ardent,  independent,  and  benevolent  of  minds;  and  if 
I  may  seem  to  have  taken  away  somewhat  from  his  absolute 
originality,  I  have  credited  him  in  compensation  with  the  virtue 
of  loyalty.  He  was  truly  loyal  to  Socrates ;  he  desired  to  make 
the  world  know  and  honour  Socrates ;  though  after  the  manner 
of  those  times,  he  thought  it  permissible  to  give  picturesque  form 
to  his  exposition,  to  expand  hints  into  theories,  and  even  at  times 
to  attribute  to  Socrates  theories  which  really  belonged  to  the 
Pythagorean  school. 

Of  the  personal  career  of  Plato  I  have  so  far  said  nothing; 
and  in  truth  we  know  but  little  of  it.  That  after  the  death  of 
Socrates  he  at  first  avoided  Athens ;  that  he  travelled ;  that 
possibly  (though  this  is  uncertain)  he  had  the  misfortune  to  be 
sold  into  slavery,  but  was  redeemed  from  it  by  one  who  admired 
and  esteemed  him ;  these  things  are  recorded,  and  may  be  true. 
Certainly  he  afterwards  lectured  at  Athens,  in  the  groves  of  the 
Academy,  and  in  his  old  age  was  esteemed  and  honoured  there. 
He  was,  at  any  rate,  not  poor ;  and  in  relation  to  this  a  repartee 
of  his  to  the  cynic  Diogenes  may  commend  itself  to  us.  Diogenes 
with  dirty  sandals  had  entered  the  house  of  Plato  and  trod  on 
a  new  carpet  there :  "Thus,"  he  said,  "I  trample  on  the  pride  of 
Plato."  "With  greater  pride,  Diogenes,"  was  Plato's  answer. 
One  more  important  thing  respecting  Plato  remains  to  be  added ; 
in  the  groves  of  the  Academy  he  had  Aristotle  for  his  pupil. 

With  Aristotle  we  enter  on  a  new  era ;  and  as  far  as  religion 
is  concerned,  we  are  in  a  certain  sense  standing  at  a  scene  of  death. 
Not  that  the  spirit  of  religion  is  dead ;  but  the  form  of  it,  as 
hitherto  held  among  the  Greeks,  is  held  to  be  outside  the  range 
of  real  belief.  Though  the  author  of  the  Magna  Moralia  (printed 
among  Aristotle's  works)  was  very  likely  not  Aristotle  himself, 
he  knew  the  mind  of  Aristotle,  and  in  his  second  book  he  utt«rs  this 
remarkable  sentiment;  "It  would  be  a  strange  thing  if  any  one 
said  that  he  loved  Zeus."  Certainly  we  have  got  very  far  from 
i^schylus  and  Sophocles  in  that  sentiment ;  from  /Eschylus,  who 
speaks  of  Zeus  as  guiding  mortals  in  the  way  of  wisdom ;  from 
Sophocles,  in  whose  play  the  dispirited  Electra  is  bidden  to  commit 
the  pain  of  her  anger  to  the  superintending  providence  of  Zeus ! 
But  the  mythology  was  in  Aristotle's  time  quite  rejected  by  the 
philosophers  ;  and  Zeus  fell  with  it.  Yet  to  Aristotle,  God  remains  ; 
"a  living  being,  eternal  and  most  excellent";    he  tells  us  in  the 


vn]         THE   HELLENIC   QUEST  AFTER   TRUTH  189 

Metaphysics  (xi.  7) ;  and  he  appears  to  say  that  the  motions  of 
the  universe  take  place  through  the  passionate  desire  of  all  things 
for  this  divine  being.  That  is  an  exalted  conception ;  and  exalted 
too  is  Aristotle's  description  of  happiness :  "an  energy  of  the  soul 
on  the  Hnes  of  perfect  virtue,  and  in  a  perfect  life."  Scarcely 
could  these  thoughts  be  excelled ;  but  Aristotle  has  not  the  warmth 
of  Socrates  or  of  Plato,  and  in  the  region  of  religion  he  has  not 
their  stimulating  power. 

What  Aristotle  is  most  remarkable  for  is  his  extraordinary 
comprehensiveness,  his  resolution  not  to  let  any  side  of  reaHty 
pass  by  him  unnoticed.  It  could  not  be  expected  that,  when  he 
came  to  recording  facts,  he  should  not  set  down  much  on  hearsay ; 
nor  could  his  analyses  of  thought  always  be  perfect ;  but  he  sweeps 
from  end  to  end  of  reality  with  a  quiet  determination  in  which  no 
man  has  ever  equalled  him. 

After  Aristotle,  the  thoughts  of  the  learned  in  the  Greek  world 
became  specialised  into  different  branches;  but  their  range  on 
the  whole  did  not  diminish,  and  their  value  in  many  ways  was 
great.  In  the  field  of  science  there  are  illustrious  examples; 
Euclid  and  Archimedes  in  mathematics  are  household  words; 
in  astronomy,  Aristarchus  of  Samos  anticipated  by  conjecture, 
though  he  could  not  prove,  the  theory  which  Copernicus  introduced 
to  the  modern  world,  and  which  to-day  is  a  commonplace  truth ; 
Hipparchus  was  the  greatest,  Ptolemy  the  most  famous,  astrono- 
mical observer  of  ancient  time.  Rather  later  than  the  latest 
of  these,  Galen  was  eminent  in  medicine. 

Ethical  philosophy  is  nearer  to  religion  than  science  is ;  and 
more  than  Academics  and  Peripatetics  (as  is  probable),  more 
than  Epicureans  (as  is  certain),  the  Stoics  kept  up  a  noble  atmo- 
sphere of  resolution  and  of  allegiance  to  duty  in  the  world.  But 
our  means  of  estimating  Stoicism  would  be  scanty  if  Greek 
philosophers  of  this  school  had  been  the  only  teachers  of  it ;  we 
know  it  much  more  intimately  through  Roman  writers ;  and 
Epictetus,  though  a  Greek  and  writing  in  Greek,  lived  under  the 
Roman  empire.  It  will  be  better  therefore  to  reserve  what 
I  have  to  say  about  Stoicism  till  the  next  chapter,  of  which  Rome, 
and  the  religion  of  Rome,  will  be  the  theme. 

Let  me  finish  this  chapter  by  endeavouring  to  indicate  briefly 
what  we  owe  to  ancient  Hellas.  The  extraordinary  variety  of 
Greek  achievements,  both  by  external  actions  recorded  in  history, 
and  by  works  of  literature  and  art,  is  the  characteristic  which 
first  strikes  us ;    but  the  real  goodness  of  some  eminent  Greeks, 


190  ANCIENT   RELIGION  [ch.  vn 

and  the  intensity  of  moral  and  religious  feeling  in  these  select 
persons,  is  a  nobler  possession  still.  Yet  the  noblest  of  the  Greeks 
did  not  establish  such  a  foundation  of  divine  goodness  that  all  man- 
kind might  rest  in  this  afterwards,  as  securely  leading  us  into  that 
infinite  unknown,  which  hes  beyond  the  present  Ufe.  The  greatest 
absolute  achievement  of  the  Hellenic  race  was  the  steadying  and 
clarifying  of  the  intellect ;  to  appreciate  how  much  they  did  for 
j  '  mankind  in  this  way,  let  any  one  compare  the  lucid  narrative  of 
v.  Thucydides  with  any  Oriental  writing  whatever.  It  is  true 
that  their  greatest  men,  Socrates,  Plato,  and  Aristotle,  fell,through 
lack  of  knowledge,  into  some  intellectual  errors;  but  the  more 
than  two  thousand  years  experience  which  mankind  have  had 
since  their  time  gives  us  an  unfair  advantage  over  them,  if  the 
rivalry  be  regarded  as  personal. 

In  conclusion,  I  hope  that  the  pains  which  I  have  taken  in 
this  chapter  to  vindicate  for  Socrates  his  true  preeminence 
among  the  Greeks,  will  not  be  regarded  as  pressed  unduly ;  it 
is  of  no  slight  importance  that  the  master  should  be  recognised 
as  the  master. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ANCIENT   RELIGION  :    ROME 

In  imperial  Rome  the  ancient  times  had  their  end  and  Hmit, 
their  euthanasia,  their  passage  through  the  abysses  of  death,  out 
of  which  the  heavenly  earth  was  to  be  born.     Not  that  that  new 
birth  lay  in  ancient  Rome,  or  could  have  come  about  there :   not 
to  Rome  did  the  seed  of  eternity  belong ;  but  to  Rome  belonged 
the  office  of  protecting  that  seed  in  its  tender  infancy.     We  are 
accustomed  to  think  of  ancient  Rome  as  an  aggressive  military 
power,  conquering  and  subduing ;   and  that  indeed  she  was ;   but     ) 
that  was   not   her  most   noble   characteristic.     Rome   did   also     / 
stretch  a  canopy  and  a  shelter  over  the  nations ;   and  under  that     '> 
shelter  grew  whatever  of  spiritual  life  our  western  world  possessed ;     o 
and  though  when  the  religion  of  Christ  was  born,  in  which  the     \ 
capacity  of  eternity  lay,  Rome  would  not  endure  the  seeming      ■/ 
rivalry  of  that  spiritual  government,  and  made  fitful  and  sometimes      ) 
severe  war  upon  it,  yet  the  general  protection  had  in  it  more      ^ 
service  than  the  occasional  hostihty  had  danger. 

How  did  this  power  of  ancient  Rome  come  about?  in  what 
quahties  was  its  protective  influence  born  ?  what  were  its  demerits, 
its  corruptions?  for  its  great  merits  had  certainly  their  counter- 
balance in  the  way  of  evil  done.  Let  me,  before  beginning  to 
answer  these  questions,  acknowledge  the  debt  I  owe  to  a  recent 
work,  Mr  Warde  Fowler's  Religious  Experience  of  the  Roman  "^ 
People.  It  is  a  work  in  which  the  foundations  of  a  great  subject 
are  largely  and  accurately  laid;  nor  could  I  have  written  the 
present  chapter  without  its  help. 

When  Livy  tells  us  that  it  is  "sufficiently  certain"  {satis 
constat)  that  ^neas  with  his  Trojans  came  to  Italy,  and  that 
^neas  became  the  ancestor  of  a  dynasty  from  which  Romulus, 
the  famous  founder  of  Rome,  was  descended ;  are  we  to  attribute 
any  value  at  all  to  so  confident  an  assertion?  To  debate  such 
a  question  is  hke  trying  to  read  a  book  when  the  twilight  of  dawn 


192  ANCIENT   RELIGION:    ROME  [ch. 

has  only  just  begun ;  so  let  us  leave  it  undebated,  and  pass  on. 
In  any  case,  the  founders  of  Rome  came  of  a  stock  which  was 
predominantly  Latin  ;  it  may  be  added,  predominantly  agricultural 
in  their  type  of  life  and  character :  yet  a  wariike  prescience  must 
also  have  been  in  these  founders  when  they  seized  on  this  situation 
by  the  side  of  the  principal  river  of  middle  Italy  for  their  settled 
abode.  It  is  probable  that  they  had  an  eye  to  defence  rather 
than  to  commerce ;  but  the  river  was  a  means  of  commerce  also, 
and  Rome  began  eariy  to  have  wider  intercourse  with  the  outer 
world  than  Alba  Longa,  out  of  which  Romulus  is  said  to  have 
come,  could  possibly  have  enjoyed. 

Whatever  be  true,  whatever  untrue,  of  those  picturesque 
stories  which  tell  us  of  the  early  kings  of  ancient  Rome,  the 
important  points  to  remember  about  the  Romans  of  that  period 
are,  first,  that  they  had  a  character  full  of  warlike  grit;  next, 
that  they  were  religious.  Whence  came  their  religion  ?  Obviously 
there  are  analogies  in  it  to  the  Greek  religion  (as  there  are  in  the 
Latin  language  to  the  Greek  language) ;  but  we  have  reason  to 
say  also  that  much  in  it  was  derived  from  the  Etruscans  (who 
themselves  were  indebted  to  the  Greeks) ;  and  finally  there  were 
original  elements,  some  valuable  and  some  merely  superstitious. 
The  admixture  of  superstition  in  primitive  religions  is  a  matter 
of  course;  "the  effective  desire  to  be  in  right  relation  with  the 
Power  manifesting  itself  in  the  universe"  (so  runs  the  definition 
of  religion  quoted  by  Mr  Warde  Fowler  from  an  American  author) 
cannot  be  pure  as  long  as  the  conception  of  that  Power  is  imperfect. 
These  ancient  Romans  trembled  at  the  unknown  forest  and 
mountain  for  reasons  which  excite  our  smile  to-day  :  they  devised 
ceremonies  and  sacrifices  that  had  no  rational  ground ;  they 
imposed  disabilities  adverse  to  personal  liberty.  But  a  more 
sane  and  worthy  view  was  not  wanting  to  them  also.  Thus  they 
valued  the  family,  and  all  pertaining  to  the  family — the  household, 
the  glowing  hearth,  the  store  of  necessary  provisions,  the  land  out 
of  whose  bosom  the  sustenance  of  life  came.  Not  untruly  were 
Divine  Powers  held  to  be  interested  in  these  primary  needs  of 
men :  and  if  the  Romans  held  the  Penates,  and  the  Lares,  and 
Vesta,  to  be  deities  independent  and  separate,  this  was  not,  as 
a  first  sketch  of  immature  religion,  a  very  harmful  error.  Not 
untruly  also  was  the  discipline  of  the  family  regarded  as  under  the 
sanction  ot  Divine  Powers:  and  if  the  rule  of  the  paterfamilias 
sometimes  degenerated  into  tyranny,  yet  in  the  more  normal 
affairs  of  daily  life  there  was  strength  in  his  authority.     When  the 


vm]  ANCIENT   RELIGION:    ROME  193 

Romans  called  their  great  council  of  state  not  merely  the  council  of 
old  men  (senatibs),  but  also  the  Fathers  (patres),  this  was  a  tribute 
to  the  family  bond  the  significance  of  which  we  cannot  mistake. 

Polytheists  the  Romans  were,  and  this  was  not  unnatural: 
nor  can  we  dignify  their  worship  of  Janus,  of  Diana,  of  Minerva, 
with  any  profound  moral  meaning;  nor  even  their  worship  of 
Mars,  though  he  may  seem  a  deity  specially  Roman,  and  though 
the  worship  of  this  wild  superhuman  being  may  really  have 
administered  to  the  warlike  courage  of  the  people  who  conceived 
themselves  akin  to  him.  But  a  nobler  worship,  and  one  which 
cannot  be  left  unnoticed,  was  that  of  Jupiter  Optimus  Maximus. 
Jupiter,  Hke  the  Greek  Zeus  (the  names  are  really  identical)  is  the 
God  of  heaven ;  and  something  of  monotheism,  something  of  infinite 
power,  is  implied  in  such  a  name.  We  have  reason  to  say  that 
the  worship  of  Jupiter  was  widely  spread  in  Italy ;  but  when  those 
other  exalted  titles,  Optimus  Maximus  ("Best  and  Greatest"), 
were  added  to  the  name,  a  more  universal  moral  government  of 
the  world  was  imphed  in  the  Deity  so  conceived  than  is  commonly 
recognised  among  primitive  peoples.  It  is  true  that  in  the  temple 
of  Jupiter  Capitolinus  (where  Jupiter  was  honoured  as  "  Best  and 
Greatest")  Juno  also  and  Minerva  were  worshipped;  but  the 
unquestioned  precedence  belonged  to  Jupiter.  Now  this  great 
temple  was  begun  by  the  first  of  those  kings  of  Rome  whose 
lineage  was  confessedly  from  Etruria,  Tarquinius  Priscus;  it 
was  continued  by  his  successors;  and  it  was  finally  dedicated, 
after  the  expulsion  of  Tarquinius  Superbus  and  the  establishment 
of  the  republic,  by  the  consul  Horatius,  in  the  year  509  B.C.  But 
was  the  title  "Best  and  Greatest"  as  applied  to  Jupiter  due  to 
the  original  thought  of  the  Etruscan  kings  of  Rome,  or  was  it  the 
expression  of  the  fervid  gratitude  of  the  Roman  people  after  they 
had  expelled  their  tyrants  ?  We  cannot  tell ;  but  to  the  kings 
of  Etruscan  origin  some  of  the  merit  of  building  it  was  certainly 
due ;  and  if  any  one  doubted  the  real  existence  of  those  kings, 
it  ought  to  go  some  way  towards  removing  these  doubts  when  we 
learn  that  the  temple  "was  built  in  the  Etruscan  style,  that  its 
foundations  were  of  Etruscan  masonry i." 

Where  an  alleged  historical  fact  serves  to  explain  the  lines  of 
historical  development,  this  is  considerable  reason  for  holding 
that  historical  fact  to  be  true :  and  we  have  this  special  reason 
for  believing  the  historical  reaHty  of  that  king  of  Rome  who  came 
after  Tarquinius  Priscus  (and  who  himself  also  seems  to  have  been 

^  Warde  Fowler,  Roman  Religious  Experience,  p.  237. 
M.  D.  A.  13 


194  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  [oh. 

an  Etruscan^)  namely  Servius  Tullius,  that  to  him  is  attributed 
the  authorship  of  that  assembly  of  citizens,  which  must  have  had 
some  individual  author,  which  was  called  the  comitia  centuriata. 
It  would  not  be  correct  to  call  the  comitia  centuriata  a  parliament, 
for  the  purpose  of  it  was  not  to  speak,  but  to  vote,  though  informal 
public  speaking  was  natural,  and  could  not  be  prevented,  in 
connexion  with  such  voting ;  but  even  though  not  a  parUament, 
the  appointment  of  this  assembly  was  one  of  the  most  important 
facts  in  all  Roman  history,  and  Servius  Tullius  was  one  of  the 
truest  benefactors  of  his  country  that  ever  lived.  The  comitia 
centuriata  must  not  indeed  be  thought  of  as  a  democratic  assembly. 
It  was  military  in  the  way  in  which  the  voters  were  drawn  up 
and  the  votes  counted  (the  "century"  being  a  well-known  military 
division) ;  and  not  only  so,  but  the  classes  of  centuries  were  so 
distributed,  and  the  centuries  were  so  constituted,  that  if  the 
wealthier  citizens  were  agreed  upon  any  measure  (or  against  any 
measure),  they  carried  the  day  against  any  combination  of  the 
poorer  citizens;  and  as  the  wealthier  citizens  voted  first,  it 
generally  happened  that  the  poorer  citizens  were  not  called  upon 
to  vote  at  all.  Popular  rights,  as  far  as  this  assembly  was  con- 
cerned, were  thus  merely  in  their  beginnings ;  but  yet  they  were 
in  their  beginnings  and  were  not  an  absolute  nullity;  that  the 
whole  people  should  ever  be  called  upon  to  vote  at  all  was  in 
the  nature  of  a  concession  by  the  rich  to  the  poor.  Moreover, 
though  the  comitia  centuriata  had  no  impress  of  democracy  about 
it,  there  was  in  it  a  reminder  of  the  possibility  of  an  assembly 
that  should  have  such  an  impress.  Nor  ought  the  advantage 
to  be  overlooked  that  a  slow  development  of  liberty  is  likely  to 
be  more  permanent  (as  arousing  fewer  antagonisms)  than  a  quick 
development. 

Servius  Tullius  was  good  and  wise ;  his  successor,  if  we 
believe  the  traditional  narrative  (and  I  think  we  may  believe 
the  main  features  of  it)  was  wicked  and,  though  not  a  fool,  was 
far  from  being  wise.  Tarquinius  Superbus  (or  the  "Proud") 
is  said  to  have  been  the  murderer  of  Servius  Tullius;  and  he 
estahlislit'd  a  cruel  despotism  at  Rome.  Then  for  his  misdeeds 
he  was  driven  out  (for  the  Romans  were  not  powerless)  and  the 
republic  was  established ;  two  consuls,  elected  annually,  took  the 
place  of  the  king,  and  during  their  year  of  office  wielded  the  same 
power  which  the  king  had  wielded. 

But  king  Tarquin  sought  the  help  of  king  Porsena,  an  Etruscan 

»  Wanic  Fowler,  pp.  237,  245. 


VIII]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  196 

king  whose  capital  was  Clusium  in  Etruria;  and  king  Porsena 
came  to  his  help  with  a  great  army,  and  Rome  was  obliged  to 
surrender.  Tarquin  might  thus  have  been  restored,  had  not 
Porsena,  elated  with  his  victory,  pressed  on  to  the  conquest  of 
all  the  Latin  cities.  The  Greeks  from  Cumae  came  to  the  aid  of 
the  Latins,  and  Porsena  was  badly  defeated  by  them,  and  was 
henceforth  compelled  to  confine  his  dominion  to  the  Etruscan 
side  of  the  river  Tiber.  Thus,  though  the  Romans  lost  the  territory 
which  they  had  previously  possessed  on  the  Etruscan  side  of  the 
Tiber,  they  saved  that  much  more  valuable  possession — their 
freedom.  Moreover,  though  the  Romans,  in  their  hour  of  defeat, 
had  bound  ^  themselves  to  Porsena  not  to  use  iron  for  any  except 
agricultural  purposes,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  they  regarded 
this  engagement  as  binding  on  them,  when  Porsena  was  no  longer 
able  to  enforce  it. 

With  this  epoch  the  real  heart  of  Roman  history  begins. 
Free  the  Romans  were  after  the  retreat  of  Porsena,  but  feeble ; 
in  220  years,  after  the  termination  of  the  third  Samnite  war, 
they  had  become  the  strongest  power  in  Italy;  and  it  needed 
but  another  century  to  prove  their  superiority  in  arms  over  every 
country  that  bordered  on  the  Mediterranean  Sea.  By  virtue  of 
what  qualities,  and  through  what  actions,  did  they  achieve  so 
wonderful  an  advance? 

There  was  a  disposition  among  the  Romans  themselves  to 
attribute  their  victorious  progress  to  the  religious  disposition  of 
their  race  in  the  earlier  stages  of  their  history.  Thus  Cicero  told 
the  senate^ : 

Let  us  cherish  what  self-love  we  like,  Conscript  Fathers,  yet  we  are 
not  more  niimerous  than  the  Spaniards,  nor  more  muscular  than  the  Gauls, 
nor  more  clever  than  the  Carthaginians,  nor  more  artistic  than  the  Greeks, 
nor  better  endowed  with  homely  natural  feeling  than  the  Italians  themselves 
and  specially  the  Latins ;  but  it  is  in  piety  and  religious  duty  and  in  this 
single  piece  of  wisdom,  that  we  have  understood  all  things  to  be  ruled  and 
governed  by  the  will  of  the  immortal  gods,  this  it  is  in  which  we  have 
surpassed  all  races  and  all  nations. 

Such  a  boast,  though  not  without  some  portion  of  truth,  cannot 

be  accepted  by  us  in  its  entirety.     Never,  not  even  in  the  years 

of  the  growing    epublic,  had  the  citizens  of  Rome  so  deep  a  sense 

^  of  the  connexion  of  religion  with  the  moral  duties  of  men  as  had 

^  Pliny  XXXIV.  14.  This  passage,  together  with  Tacitus,  Hist.  ni.  72,  disproves 
Livy's  romantic  story  of  the  defence  of  the  bridge  by  Horatius  Codes.  For  the  defeat 
of  Porsena  by  the  Latins  and  Greeks,  see  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  v.  36  and  vii.  2-1 1 . 
I  take  these  references  from  Arnold's  History  of  Rome,  vol.  i.  pp.  127-8. 

2  De  Harusp.  resp.  19. 

13—2 


A 


196  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  [oh. 

the  Hebrew  prophets  or  even  some  of  the  Greek  philosophers  and 
poets.  The  effective  cause  of  the  Roman  conquest  of  the  western 
world  was  more  complex,  and  not  so  pure,  as  Cicero  represents  it 
in  the  remarkable  passage  which  I  have  just  quoted  from  him. 

It  will  be  the  best  preliminary  to  showing  what  the  actual 
state  of  the  case  was,  if  I  quote  from  Cicero  another  passage,  which 
apparently  says  the  same  thing  as  the  passage  already  quoted, 
but  says  it  with  a  difference. 

"  If  we  wish  to  compare  ourselves  with  foreign  nations,"  he  says,  "  in 
other  matters  we  shall  be  foimd  not  more  than  equal  to  them,  or  perhaps 
even  inferior ;  but  in  religion,  that  is,  in  worship  of  the  gods,  we  are  much 
superior  to  them."     Cicero,  De  Naturd  Deorum,  ii.  8. 

"In  worship  of  the  gods,"  Cicero  says,  the  Romans  surpassed 
other  nations ;  but  this  is  not  the  same  as  surpassing  other  nations 
in  the  religious  spirit,  which  is  what  he  had  said  in  the  previous 
passage.  It  is  not  the  same,  because  worship  may  be  external 
only ;  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  this  was  the  sad  and  serious  defect 
of  the  religion  of  ancient  Rome,  that  as  time  went  on  it  became 
more  and  more  external,  more  and  more  a  collection  of  forms  and 
ceremonies,  less  and  less  an  inspiring  motive  towards  noble  and 
philanthropic  acts.  This  decay  was  taking  place  during  the  whole 
/  period  of  three  centuries  which  separated  the  beginning  of  the 
republic  from  the  times  of  Hannibal,  or  from  the  year  510  B.C. 
to  the  year  202  B.C.,  when  Hannibal  was  overthrown.  A  certain 
recovery  took  place  later  on  through  that  portion  of  the  religious 
spirit  which  had  been  rescued  by  Greek  philosophj^  and  which 
was  absorbed  eagerly  by  the  highest  Roman  minds  of  the  second 
and  first  centuries  before  Christ,  and  for  long  afterwards.  But 
the  religious  spirit  inherent  in  Greek  philosophy  never  penetrated 
into  the  great  mass  of  men ;  and  I  need  not  say  that  the  Roman 
dominance  over  the  world  had  not  its  origin  in  any  inspiration 
drawn  from  that  source. 

Let  me  return  to  primitive  Rome,  to  the  times  of  the  early 
republic,  and  endeavour  to  show  in  the  broad  sequence  of  the 
ensuing  centuries  what  was  the  cause  of  the  victorious  career 
of  Rome.  Religion  was  partly  the  cause,  it  is  true ;  for  religion 
kept  the  Romans  from  irredeemable  follies,  and  curbed  the  arro- 
gance of  individual  men.  But  religion  in  them  became  associated 
with  another  feeling,  became  almost  absorbed  into  another  feeling, 
which  though  honourable  in  itself  was  not  religious,  and  was 
capable  of  working  injury  to  other  nations ;  the  love  of  Rome 
as  Rome.     Of  such  a  patriotic  feeling  the  Romans  were  no  unique 


vni]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  197 

example  in  antiquity;  but  they  were  unique  in  the  degree  in 
which  they  avoided  its  dangers;  they  did  not  avoid  aU  its 
dangers,  but  they  avoided  those  which  might  have  wrecked  them 
palpably  and  utterly.  We  shall  see  this,  if  we  compare  the  history 
of  Rome  with  the  history  of  two  other  famous  cities,  Jerusalem  and 
Athens.  All  three  cities,  Rome,  Athens,  and  Jerusalem,  entered 
upon  the  most  important  phase  of  their  respective  histories  at 
approximately  the  same  time,  that  is  towards  the  close  of  the 
sixth  century  before  Christ;  and  perhaps  the  most  burning  and 
enthusiastic  love  was  that  which  the  Jews  felt  for  Jerusalem. 
But  the  legislation  of  Ezra,  when  Jerusalem  had  been  finally 
reestablished,  narrowed  the  Jewish  mind  under  the  pretext  that 
this  narrowness  was  a  religious  duty;  and  the  noble  qualities 
of  the  Jews  could  not  in  the  end  preserve  the  city  of  their  love 
from  conquest,  or  themselves  from  dispersion  into  the  distant 
comers  of  the  earth.  The  Athenians  were  strangely  unbalanced, 
and  attended  far  too  Httle  to  the  internal  organisation  of  their 
city  and  of  themselves  as  its  citizens ;  nor  had  they  any  flexibility 
as  far  as  their  citizenship  was  concerned;  they  drew  in  no  fresh 
blood  from  outside.  Hence  they  were  incapable  of  infusing 
vigour  into  the  Greek  race  as  a  whole ;  they  themselves  fell  into 
inanition,  though  their  achievements  are  in  many  respects  a  posses- 
sion to  the  world  for  ever.  But  the  Romans,  with  all  their  love 
for  Rome,  had  the  good  sense  to  make  their  citizenship  an  expand- 
ing citizenship  ;  and  it  was  the  combination  of  these  two  qualities, 
their  devotion  to  their  own  city,  and  yet  their  willingness  to  expand 
their  citizenship,  which  was  the  chief  cause  of  their  conquering 
career.  It  may  be  asked,  whether  the  motive  which  I  ascribe 
to  them  is  a  religious  motive?  It  was  not  a  simply  religious 
motive,  and  it  had  many  defects  from  the  point  of  view  of  true 
religion  ;  but  there  was  much  faithfulness  in  it  and  much  generosity, 
and  these  are  qualities  which  are  fostered  even  by  an  imperfect 
religion,  provided  it  be  sincere ;  and  the  native  Roman  religion 
had  for  a  long  time  great  sincerity. 

Let  me  illustrate  the  guiding  principle  which  I  have  just 
mentioned  by  going  through  some  of  the  details  of  Roman  history. 
Even  under  the  early  kings,  if  tradition  in  any  degree  speaks 
truth,  Sabines  and  Latins  and  Etruscans  were  received  as  citizens 
into  the  Roman  city  on  equal  terms  with  the  original  inhabitants ; 
courage  and  capacity  gave  a  certain  claim  to  equal  rights,  though 
consanguinity  were  absent.  But  the  strain  and  struggle  which 
had  to  be  undergone  before  it  could  be   determined   that   this 


198  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  [ch. 

expanding  citizenship  should  be  a  principle  of  Roman  development, 
took  place  after  the  kings  had  been  driven  out.  The  Romans 
after  that  crisis  had  retained  their  liberty,  but  poverty  had  come 
along  with  it ;  they  had  suffered  a  reduction  in  power,  in  wealth ; 
and  the  poorest  of  them  were  overburdened  with  debts.  Now 
these  poorest  of  the  Romans,  though  not  absolutely  and  under 
all  circumstances  deprived  of  a  vote  in  the  comitia  centuriata, 
were  not  reckoned  as  part  of  the  "populus,"  the  Roman  people; 
they  were  "plebs,"  plebeians;  and  the  Roman  aristocracy  did 
not  consider  themselves  bound  to  the  plebeians  by  those  considera- 
tions of  humanity  which  they  would  have  recognised  as  due  to 
their  equals.  Hence  a  plebeian  who  could  not  pay  his  debts 
might  be  sold  for  a  slave  or  might  be  forced  to  undergo  any,  even 
the  extremest,  cruelty.  Fifteen  years  after  the  kings  had  been 
driven  out,  the  misery  of  the  plebeians  reached  a  point  which, 
to  brave  men,  became  unendurable.  Their  numbers  were  probably 
not  inferior  to  the  numbers  of  their  oppressors,  the  patricians; 
but  in  military  force  they  must  have  been  greatly  inferior;  and 
of  armed  resistance  they  never  thought.  Then  there  flashed 
upon  them  a  thought,  a  resolution,  which  had  no  doubt  some 
first  begetter,  but  which  was  so  congenial  to  them  all,  that  no 
definite  leadership  was  needed  in  the  execution  of  it ;  to  abandon 
that  city  which  had  not  acknowledged  them  as  her  true  children, 
and  to  build  a  new  city  for  themselves  where  they  might  live 
securely.  So  they  left  Rome  and  marched  to  the  river  Anio, 
which  flows  into  the  Tiber  a  few  miles  above  Rome ;  they  crossed 
the  Anio,  and  established  themselves  on  a  hill  which  thenceforward 
was  called  the  "Mons  Sacer,"  or  Sacred  Mount,  from  a  remem- 
brance of  the  great  compact  that  was  made  there. 

Next,  we  read  (and  what  we  read  certainly  contains  some 
portion  of  truth)  that  the  patricians,  dismayed  at  this  weakening 
of  their  city  by  the  secession  of  so  large  a  portion  of  its  population, 
determined  among  themselves  that  the  case  was  not  one  for 
compelling,  but  rather  for  persuading  (if  possible)  the  plebeians 
to  return ;  and  they  sent  an  embassy  to  the  plebeians.  The 
spokesman  of  this  embassy,  Menenius  Agrippa,  was  a  man  favour- 
ably regarded  by  the  plebeians,  and  an  orator  of  some  power.  He, 
it  is  said,  addressed  the  plebeians  with  the  following  fable — which, 
well  known  though  it  is,  it  may  be  permissible  to  quote  here : 

Once  upon  a  time  the  members  of  the  body  were  not,  as  now,  har- 
monious, but  each  severally  had  his  own  thought  and  his  own  way  of 
expressing  it;    then  were  the  remaining  parts  of  the  body  indignant  with 


vm]  ANCIENT    RELIGION :    ROME  199 

the  belly,  which,  they  said,  was  nourished  by  their  care,  labour,  and  service ; 
the  belly,  at  rest  in  the  middle  place,  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  enjoy  the 
pleasures  accorded  to  it.  Therefore  they  entered  into  an  agreement, 
that  the  hand  should  not  bring  food  to  the  mouth,  neither  shoiild  the 
mouth  accept  the  food  when  given,  neither  should  the  teeth  crush  it. 
Desiring,  in  this  angry  temper,  to  subdue  the  belly  by  himger,  the  members 
themselves  and  the  whole  body  came  to  the  verge  of  dissolution.  Thus 
was  it  made  plain,  that  the  belly  had  no  indolent  office ;  that  it  contributed 
to  nourishment  as  much  as  it  received  nourishment ;  seeing  that  it  dispersed 
into  all  the  Umbs  of  the  body  that  by  which  we  Uve  and  grow,  namely  the 
blood,  apportioned  equally  into  all  the  veins  with  ripened  energy  after  we 
have  eaten  food.     Livy  ii.  32. 

The  plebeians,  we  read,  were  persuaded,  and  returned  to  Rome ; 
but  not  without  having  secured  from  the  patricians  a  concession 
of  the  highest  importance ;  namely,  that  two  tribunes  should  be 
appointed,  themselves  plebeians,  to  whose  charge  the  security  of 
the  plebeians  should  be  entrusted.  The  persons  of  the  tribunes 
were  declared  to  be  sacred  and  inviolable ;  and  should  they  have 
cognisance  of  wrong  done  to  any  plebeian,  either  in  respect  of 
undue  pressure  for  the  payment  of  his  debts  or  in  respect  of  the 
exactment  of  military  service  from  him,  very  large  powers  were 
given  them  for  remedying  the  wrong.  Indeed  these  plebeian 
tribunes  had  the  power  also  of  protecting  patricians,  and  sometimes 
used  that  power.  I  need  not  set  forth  in  detail  all  the  means 
assigned  to  the  tribunes  for  vindicating  their  authority ;  nor 
need  I  enter  into  the  questions  concerning  the  manner  of  their 
election,  or  the  number  of  them  in  the  early  years  after  their 
first  appointment.  In  less  than  fifty  years  after  the  secession  of 
the  plebeians  to  the  Sacred  Mount  we  find  that  the  number  of  the 
tribunes  of  the  plebs  was  ten,  and  this  number  was  never  departed 
from  in  the  later  history. 

But  what  cannot  be  left  untold  (however  familiar  it  be  to  the 
reader  of  Roman  history)  is  that  right  which  became  finally  (even 
if  not  from  the  first)  the  distinctive  power  of  the  tribunes  of  the 
plebs,  the  right  possessed  by  each  one  of  them  individually 
of  stopping  any  piece  of  the  State  machinery  (or  the  whole,  it 
would  seem)  by  his  single  prohibitory  voice.  A  conspicuous 
instance  of  the  exercise  of  this  power  is  recorded  in  the  35th  chapter 
of  the  sixth  book  of  Livy.  Two  of  the  tribunes  of  the  plebs  had 
brought  forward  bills  of  a  kind  greatly  adverse  to  the  peculiar 
prerogatives  of  the  patricians,  and  these  bills,  in  the  natural 
course  of  things,  would  have  been  brought  before  the  comitia 
for  decision.  But  the  patricians  tried  to  bar  these  bills  from  the 
outset,  so  that  they  should  not  even  be  brought  before  the  comitia. 


200  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  [oh. 

Accordingly  they  induced  some  of  the  tribunes  of  the  plebs,  who 
happened  to  be  favourable  to  the  patricians,  to  interpose  their 
"veto"  (possibly  these  tribunes  were  clients  of  some  of  the  patri- 
cians) ;  the  effect  they  desired  was  produced ;  the  bills  were  barred. 
But  Sextius,  one  of  the  two  tribunes  who  were  promoting  the 
bills,  turned  round  upon  the  patricians  and  said:  "Very  well. 
Fathers  of  the  State ;  you  are  greatly  pleased  with  our  colleagues' 
veto ;  see  how  you  will  like  ours."  And  he  prohibited  all  comitia 
from  being  held,  in  which  patrician  magistrates  could  be  elected. 
And  Livy  tells  us  (what  is  rather  hard  to  believe)  that  for  five 
years  there  was  an  entire  absence  of  the  higher  magistrates  in 
Rome. 

Whether  the  above  narrative  be  exactly  true  or  not,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  things  like  it  took  place  :  and  well  may  Mommsen^ 
say: 

We  have  an  evidence  of  the  strong  civic  spirit  of  the  people  in  the 
feict,  not  that  it  embraced  such  a  constitution,  but  that  it  endured  it,  and 
that  the  commvmity,  notwitlistanding  the  most  vehement  convulsions, 
held  together. 

Strange  indeed  it  is  that  any  people  should  have  enacted 
that  the  whole  action  of  the  State  was  to  be  frozen  into  inertness, 
if  some  lowborn  official  by  his  mere  single  word  resolved  that  so 
it  should  be !  But  it  is  a  signal  proof  of  the  superiority  of  the 
moral  temper  to  intellectual  perspicacity  in  the  affairs  of  men 
that  the  citizens  of  Rome  did,  for  nearly  three  centuries  after  the 
establishment  of  the  tribunes  of  the  plebs,  actually  grow  in  mutual 
harmony  and  in  effective  force.  The  most  unlikely  measures 
may  prove  salutary,  if  a  salutary  will  is  behind  them. 

Is  it  not  plain — whatever  be  the  uncertainty  as  to  the  details 
of  these  ancient  records,  and  whatever  may  have  been  the  barbarity 
and  cruelty  of  individual  Romans — that  the  Roman  people  were 
flexible  and  not  rigid  in  their  conception  of  the  meaning  of  a  State, 
flexible  and  not  rigid  in  tlicir  actual  j)ractice  of  determining 
who  were  their  fellow-citizens?  The  famous  fable  of  Menenius 
Agrippa  does  not  for  a  moment  giv^e  up  the  principle  that  the 
aristocracy  are  the  rightful  rulers  of  a  State;  that  principle  is 
involved  in  the  terms  of  it ;  but  it  does  most  emphatically  recognise 
that  the  ])lcbcians  are  fellow-citizens.  We  may  be  sure  that  it 
was  not  all  the  patricians  who  would  gladly  have  admitted  this; 
but  this  was  the  dominant  feeling  of  the  Roman  people  in  that 
age,  and  it  was  a  feeling  that  had  its  parallels  in  their  treatment 

'  History  of  Rome,  Book  n.  ch.  2. 


vm]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  201 

of  aliens  in  the  after  history.  Provided  the  majesty  of  Rome  was 
secure  (but  that  indeed  was  an  essential  condition)  the  Romans 
were  quite  willing  to  admit  others  to  share  in  their  citizenship. 

Nor  was  it  only  in  their  general  conception  of  citizenship,  but 
also  in  their  practice  on  many  matters  which  did  not  affect  principle 
directly  (though  they  could  not  help  doing  so  indirectly),  that  the 
Romans  showed  a  flexibility,  an  equability  of  mind,  rare  among 
ancient  peoples.  We  read  in  Livy  (ii.  55,  56)  that  when  the 
plebeian  Volero  had  been  within  an  ace  of  being  scourged  by  the 
order  of  the  consuls,  and  had  only  set  himself  free  by  his  uncommon 
strength,  having  been  after  this  elected  tribune  of  the  plebs,  he 
sought  no  compensation  for  his  personal  wrongs,  but  brought  in 
a  bill  that  plebeian  magistrates  should  henceforth  be  elected  in 
the  comitia  tributa^  (a  form  of  public  assembly  which  did  not 
exclude  the  patricians,  but  in  which  they  had  not  the  predominance 
which  they  had  in  the  comitia  centuriata).  And  this  bUl  was 
actually  carried,  and  became  law,  a  year  later;  not,  it  is  true, 
without  great  danger  of  civil  strife,  perhaps  even  of  civil  war ;  but 
both  on  the  side  of  the  plebeians,  and  on  the  side  of  the  patricians, 
there  were  mitigating  influences  at  work,  by  which  the  fiercer 
passions  were  subdued. 

This  is  no  isolated  instance  in  Roman  history;  as  we  go  on 
from  decade  to  decade,  from  century  to  century,  we  perceive 
that  the  people  of  Rome  were  not  narrow  tempered ;  they  wished 
to  associate  with  their  State,  and  on  terms  not  wholly  luiequal, 
all  those  on  whose  loyalty  and  friendliness  they  could  rely.  It  is 
true  that  the  degree  in  which  they  allowed  those  various  rights 
which  constituted  citizenship  to  be  possessed  by  the  inhabitants 
of  towns  in  Latium  and  other  parts  of  Italy  was  very  different 
in  different  cases ;  but  just  as  deliberate  forethought,  and  not 
passion,  was  the  agency  whereby  patricians  and  plebeians  were 
finally  reconciled  at  Rome,  and  became  one  people,  so  it  was 
deliberate  forethought,  and  not  passion,  by  which  the  Romans 
gradually  united  to  themselves  the  towns  and  the  peoples  in  other 
parts  of  Italy.  The  complexity  of  the  various  systems  of  civic 
rights  which  prevailed  in  Italy,  wherever  Rome  was  dominant, 
was  great,  and  far  beyond  any  possibility  of  being  described  in 
the  present  chapter;    but  there  was  no  rigidity  in  the  Roman 


^  No  account  has  reached  us  how  the  particular  form  of  assembly  called  the  comitia 
tributa  came  into  existence.  The  actual  assembling  by  tribes  would  be  easier  than 
the  assembling  by  centuries ;  and  this  would  be  the  first  motive  for  it  (probably) ; 
but  it  would  soon  be  felt  to  favour  the  plebs. 


202  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  [OH. 

procedure ;  and  thus  it  came  to  pass  that,  in  the  end,  all  Italians 
looked  with  pride  to  Rome,  as  the  mother-city  of  the  world. 

Deep,  then,  in  the  heart  of  the  Roman  people  lay  those  qualities 
of  moderation  and  sane  judgment  which  made  of  Rome  the  typical 
ruling  city,  by  desert  as  well  as  in  fact,  of  all  ancient  times ;  but 
it  is  not  to  be  concealed  that  these  qualities  received  a  point, 
a  penetrating  force,  through  another  motive,  less  praiseworthy, 
less  accordant  with  a  truly  divine  spirit.  The  Romans  desired 
to  be  just ;  but  they  were  resolved  that,  if  by  any  action  of  their 
own  they  could  possibly  secure  it,  Rome  should  be  chief  above 
all  her  rivals.  It  may  perhaps  be  said  that  the  wish  to  be  chief 
was  natural.  It  was  so;  but  to  make  it  a  motive  of  the  first 
rank  brought  dangerous  temptations  with  it.  Rome  gave  way 
to  these  temptations  just  as  Athens  had  given  way  to  them ;  but 
Athens,  in  giving  way  to  them,  had  incurred  signal  defeat  and 
disaster;  the  forethought,  the  calm  judgment,  of  the  Romans 
saved  them  from  such  a  calamity  as  this.  But  none  the  less  was 
/  the  relentless  determination  of  the  Romans,  not  to  endure  a  rival 
dominion  to  their  own,  a  calamity  to  the  world  at  large ;  the  fact 
that  this  jealous  sentiment  was  so  common  in  ancient  times  did 
)  not  in  the  least  mitigate  the  disastrous  nature  of  its  consequences. 
Rivals  whom  Rome  really  feared,  when  once  they  had  been 
subdued,  were  destroyed  utterly.  The  first  of  such  rivals  was 
the  great  Etruscan  city  of  Veii ;  this,  after  uneasy  relations  of 
alternate  war  and  peace  had  existed  for  nearly  ninety  years,  the 
Romans  captured  in  393  B.C.,  and  all  the  inhabitants  who  were 
not  slain  in  the  assault  were  sold  for  slaves.  The  cities  of  Latium 
had  a  population  too  nearly  akin  to  the  Romans  in  blood,  and  too 
much  associated  with  them  by  past  alliances,  for  such  an  inter- 
necine conflict  to  be  probable  in  their  case.  But  when,  in  the 
year  339  B.C.,  the  Latin  cities  proposed  to  unite  with  Rome  so 
as  to  make  a  single  country  of  which  Rome  was  to  be  the  capital, 
the  Latin  cities  to  have  collectively  an  equal  voting  power  with 
the  single  city  of  Rome,  and  also  to  elect  one  out  of  the  two  consuls, 
who  wore  to  be  the  chief  officers  of  the  united  State,  the  Romans 
took  such  offence  at  the  proposal  (which  it  must  be  admitted  had 
been  presented  in  rather  a  discourteous  manner^)  that  they 
immediately  joined  forces  with  the  Samnites,  who  were  then  at 
war  with  the  Latin  cities.  With  the  help  of  the  Samnites,  the 
Romans  subdued  the  Latins,  and  forced  them  to  accept  a  treaty 
which  made  them  distinctly  and  absolutely  subordinate  to  Rome. 

'  Livy  vin.  5. 


vm]  ANCIENT   RELIGION:    ROME  203 

Next  came  the  turn  of  the  Samnites.  It  is  probable  that  the 
Samnites,  one  of  the  bravest  and  most  warlike  peoples  in  Italy, 
were  not  altogether  unwilling  to  try  conclusions  with  the  Romans ; 
but  still  the  provocation  came  on  the  whole  from  the  Roman  side ; 
and  if  we  may  judge  by  the  chivalrous  forbearance  of  the  Samnites 
after  they  had  had  the  Roman  army  at  their  mercy  in  the  pass  of 
Caudium,  that  people  did  really  desire  an  honourable  peace  as  the 
end  of  the  conflict.  But  the  Romans  would  have  no  peace  on 
terms  of  equality;  victorious  they  must  be,  or  they  would  not 
end  the  war.  They  resumed  it  in  spite  of  the  oaths  of  their  own 
consuls  to  promote  peace,  and  did  not  cease  till  the  power  of  the 
Samnites  was  utterly  broken.  That  unfortunate  people  retained 
something  of  their  pristine  vigour  for  two  centuries  afterwards; 
and  then  what  remained  of  them  was  destroyed  by  one  of  the 
fiercest  tyrants  whom  repubhcan  Rome  produced,  Sulla. 

Neither  was  it  without  some  treachery  on  their  own  part  that 
(  the  Romans  engaged  in  their  first  war  with  Carthage,  in  264  B.C. ; 
(  and  though  their  deadly  struggle  with  Hannibal,  which  began  in 
(  218  B.C.,  was  forced  on  them  by  that  great  warrior,  and  the  Romans 
^  deserve  our  esteem  both  in  the  course  of  that  war  and  in  the  result 
of  it,  yet  in  the  third  Punic  war,  the  assault  on  Carthage  came 
wholly  and  absolutely  from  the  Roman  side,  and  was  prompted 
by  no  just  cause,  but  simply  by  the  bitter  jealousy  and  suspicion 
which  the  Romans  felt  towards  a  foe  who  had  once  been  so  strong. 
Their  destruction  of  Carthage  in  146  B.C.  must  be  reckoned  as 
(  one  of  their  greatest  national  sins.  Nor  was  the  destruction  of 
Numantia,  in  the  year  124  B.C.,  an  act  at  all  less  condemnable; 
the  courage  of  the  people  of  Numantia,  not  any  fault  of  which 
^  they  had  been  guilty,  was  the  cause  which  made  the  Romans 
wipe  them  out  from  among  the  peoples  of  the  earth.  No  other 
formal  act  of  the  Roman  repubhc  equalled  these  which  I  have  just 
named  in  wickedness ;  but  the  tyranny  which  made  the  Jews 
revolt,  and  which  led  to  their  overthrow  by  Titus  in  the  year  70a. d., 
had  its  first  motive  in  the  resentment  of  the  Romans  at  any  people 
holding  their  heads  so  high  as  the  Jews  did,  and  esteeming  them- 
selves the  elect  of  the  earth.  That  was  a  motive  which  marks 
the  Romans  as  tyrannous. 

In  the  brief  sketch  of  the  Roman  character  which  I  have 
just  been  giving,  I  have  left  unmentioned  some  of  the  most 
important  single  points  of  their  history ;  for  instance,  the  first 
beginnings  of  their  written  law,  as  made  by  their  decemvirs  in 
the  fifth  century  before  Christ ;    nor  have  I  been  able  to  narrate 


204  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  [oh. 

the  detailed  steps  by  which  the  plebeians  obtained  equality  with 
the  patricians,  which  embraced  such  different  points  as  the  con- 
cession of  intermarriage  with  the  patricians,  a  knowledge  of  the 
religious  festivals  on  which  business  might  not  be  transacted, 
and  the  enlargement  of  the  powers  of  the  comitia  tributa,  in  which 
the  plebeians  had  the  greatest  influence.  Nor  have  I  mentioned 
some  of  the  most  important  points  of  the  external  history  of  Rome ; 
that  great  catastrophe,  the  capture  and  burning  of  Rome  by  the 
Gauls,  at  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  century  before  Christ;  or 
the  whole  story  of  the  growth  of  Roman  power  in  Greece  and  in 
the  east,  which,  though  not  without  some  features  of  arrogance, 
had  much  in  it  that  was  truly  creditable. 

But  I  have  desired  to  show  clearly,  before  everything  else, 
the  moral  type  of  the  Roman  character ;  its  sanity,  its  moderation, 
its  willingness  to  listen  to  equitable  reasonings,  in  all  the  ordinary 
affairs  of  men ;  its  flexibility  and  expansiveness ;  and  withal  that 
other  element,  which  cannot  be  reckoned  as  wholly  bad,  and  which 
gave  so  much  strength  and  definiteness  to  Roman  action,  and 
which  yet  was  so  full  of  danger — the  central  resolve  that  Rome 
should  never  be  content  with  any  but  the  first  place  among  the 
powers  of  the  earth.  We  must  say  that  such  a  resolve,  when 
pressed  to  the  extreme  limit,  was  bad ;  and  bad,  because  inhuman  ; 
and  thus,  while  the  Romans  were  outwardly  the  most  successful 
nation  of  the  western  world,  and  did  in  a  certain  sense  solve  the 
question  how  a  single  city  could  rule  over  great  continents  with 
undisputed  sway,  this  success  was  not  accomplished  without 
the  destruction  of  much  that  was  truly  valuable,  without  a  weaken- 
ing of  moral  fibre  and  of  intelligent  purpose  among  those  who 
came  under  the  rule  of  Rome. 

It  will  be  some  evidence  on  the  important  question,  how  far 
religion  was  a  true  cause  of  the  nobler  side  of  that  character 
which  I  have  just  depicted,  if  I  quote  the  testimony  of  the  Greek 
historian  Polybius.  The  birth  of  Polybius  lay  just  before  the 
close  of  the  second  Punic  war,  at  the  period  when  Roman  endurance 
and  discipline  had  surmounted  the  most  terrible  strain  to  which 
it  was  ever  exposed,  and  before  the  corrupting  influences  of  eastern 
luxury  had  begun  to  flow  in  upon  the  conquerors.  Polybius 
was  a  friend  of  some  of  the  noblest  Romans,  notably  of  the  younger 
Scipio,  and  of  the  father  of  that  Scipio,  iEmilius  Paulus.  He 
thus  .saw  the  Romans  (at  any  rate  in  all  his  youthful  days)  from 
their  best  side;  and  the  worst  development  of  their  faults  came 
in    the  main  afterwards ;    but  as  giving  the  honourable  causes 


vin]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  205 

of  the  Roman   success,   the  following  passage  is  very  notice- 
able : 

The  most  important  difference  for  the  better  which  the  Roman  common- 
wealth appears  to  me  to  display  is  in  their  rehgious  beliefs.  For  I  con- 
ceive that  what  in  other  nations  is  looked  upon  as  a  reproach,  I  mean 
a  scrupiilous  fear  of  the  gods,  is  the  very  thing  which  keeps  the  Roman 
commonwealth  together.  To  such  an  extraordinary  height  is  this  carried 
among  them,  both  in  public  and  private  business,  that  nothing  could 
exceed  it.  Many  people  might  think  this  unaccountable;  but  in  my 
opinion  their  object  is  to  use  it  as  a  check  upon  the  common  people.  If  it 
were  possible  to  form  a  State  wholly  of  philosophers,  such  a  custom  would 
perhaps  be  unnecessary.  But  seeing  that  every  multitude  is  fickle,  and 
fvill  of  lawless  desires,  unreasoning  anger,  and  violent  passion,  the  only 
resource  is  to  keep  them  in  check  by  mysterious  terrors  and  scenic  effects 
of  this  sort.  Wherefore,  to  my  mind,  the  ancients  were  not  acting  without 
ptu-pose  or  at  random,  when  they  brought  in  among  the  vulgar  those 
opinions  about  the  gods,  and  the  belief  in  the  pxinishments  in  Hades; 
much  rather  do  I  think  that  men  nowadays  are  acting  rashly  and  foolishly 
in  rejecting  them.  This  is  the  reason  why>  apart  from  anything  else,  Greek 
statesmen,  if  entrusted  with  a  single  talent,  though  protected  by  ten 
checking  clerks,  as  many  seals,  and  twice  as  many  witnesses,  yet  cannot 
be  induced  to  keep  faith :  whereas  among  the  Romans,  in  their  magistracies 
and  embassies,  men  have  the  handling  of  a  great  amount  of  money,  and 
yet  from  pure  respect  to  their  oath  keep  their  faith  intact.  And,  again, 
in  other  nations  it  is  a  rare  thing  to  find  a  man  who  keeps  his  hands  out  of 
the  public  purse,  and  is  entirely  pure  in  such  matters:  but  among  the 
Romans  it  is  a  rare  thing  to  detect  a  man  in  the  act  of  committing  such 
a  crime  ^. 

It  will  be  seen  that  Polybius,  in  spite  of  his  strong  conviction 
that  the  Roman  reUgious  belief  was  the  cause  of  that  trustworthi- 
ness and  honesty  which  he  discerned  in  the  Roman  character, 
yet  cannot  bring  himself  to  share  that  belief;  he  regards  it  as 
a  delusion,  though  a  beneficent  delusion.  It  is  strange  that  it 
never  occurred  to  him  (what  certainly  had  occurred  to  Socrates 
and  Plato)  that  a  belief  which  in  its  actual  form  is  imaginative 
and  delusive  may  yet  have  an  underlying  substance  of  truth,  and 
that  it  is  this  kernel  of  truth  which  makes  it  beneficent.  But  the 
whole  Greek  and  Roman  mythological  system  had  been  deeply  dis- 
credited in  the  eyes  of  all  thinking  persons  in  the  time  of  Polybius, 
and  the  doctrine  of  a  future  Ufe  suffered  in  this  general  disesteem. 
It  was  impossible  to  replace  it  as  it  had  been,  and  before  the  end 
of  the  second  century  before  Christ,  scepticism  had  invaded  the 
Romans  also,  and  the  Roman  character  no  longer  remained  what 
it  had  been  a  century  earlier.    Some  compensation  lay  in  the  noble 

^  Polybius  VI.  56  (translation  by  Evelyn  S.  Shuckburgh). 


206  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  [ch. 

Greek  philosophy,  which  now  diffused  itself  among  the  Romans 
also;   but  this  did  not  reach  the  mass  of  men. 

The  great  expansion  of  Roman  power  which  took  place  in  the 
second  century  before  Christ  produced  one  calamitous  sequence, 
of  no  new  kind,  but  new  in  the  actual  form  which  it  took.  The 
inequality  between  patricians  and  plebeians,  as  such,  had  been 
brought  to  its  close  by  the  Lex  Hortensia^  in  the  year  287  B.C. 
But  by  that  time  the  distinction  between  patricians  and  plebeians 
no  longer  meant,  as  at  first,  the  distinction  between  the  rich  and 
the  poor.  Plebeians  were  becoming  wealthy ;  on  the  other  hand, 
Rome  (as  years  went  on)  began  to  be  the  resort  of  needy  immi- 
grants from  other  parts  of  Italy,  or  even  from  beyond  Italy,  who 
had  acquired  no  rights  of  citizenship,  or  perhaps  imperfect  rights 
of  citizenship,  so  that  they  had  no  vote  in  the  comitia,  and  therefore 
no  political  influence.  Rome,  even  in  the  second  century,  was 
beginning  to  be  that  "coUuvies  omnium  gentium,"  that  receptacle 
of  men,  the  greater  part  of  whom  were  an  unorganised  multitude, 
which  it  became  more  completely  afterwards. 

How  great  the  evil,  and  how  great  the  danger,  of  such  a  con- 
dition, will  be  obvious.  In  earlier  times  relief  had  come  to  the 
poorer  citizens  of  Rome  by  their  being  sent  out  as  colonists  into 
those  territories  of  Italy  which  Rome  had  won  by  the  sword ; 
and  though  the  Italians  may  have  suffered,  Rome  preserved  its 
well-being  and  its  capacity  for  making  further  conquests.  More- 
over, in  order  that  the  poor  might  really  benefit  in  this  way,  laws 
were  passed  limiting  the  amount  of  public  land  {i.e.  of  land  won 
by  the  whole  state)  which  any  single  individual  might  possess : 
500  jugera  (rather  more  than  300  acres  or  nearly  half  a  square 
mUe)  was  the  maximum  allowed.  It  is  the  opinion  of  Arnold 
(and  it  seems  a  reasonable  one)  that  till  the  latter  part  of  the  third 
century  before  Christ,  the  population  of  Rome  did  in  this  way 
maintain  true  progress  in  general  welfare.  But  then  came  the 
terrible  war  with  Hannibal ;  and  it  was  all  that  Rome  could  do, 
by  the  valour  of  her  sons  and  by  the  help  of  the  outposts  she  had 
established  all  over  Italy,  to  stand  against  that  furious  tempest. 
And  though  Rome  was  victorious,  victory  itself  produced  a  change 
in  her  inmost  character,  which  was  not  for  good.  Her  arms 
carried  the  Roman  name  and  the  Roman  power  to  the  east  and 
to  the  west,  over  great  tracts  of  fertile  country  in  Europe,  Asia, 

^  The  precise  effect  of  tliis  law  is  disputed ;  I  cannot  but  think  tiiat  the  true  meaning 
of  it  was  that  very  .simj)le  and  broad  meaning,  to  give  finally  and  without  dispute  the 
value  of  law,  binding  on  all  Romans,  to  all  decisions  of  the  comitia  tributa. 


vm]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  207 

and  Africa;  the  wealth  of  all  the  nations  flowed  into  her;  and 
her  rich  men  could  no  longer  be  restrained  by  any  law  prescribing 
a  technical  hmit  to  the  amount  of  their  possessions.  During  the 
second  century  before  Christ,  all  over  Italy,  the  small  farmers 
felt  their  inability  to  maintain  themselves  against  their  rich 
neighbours;  they  sold  their  lands  and  migrated  to  Rome,  and 
the  rich  who  bought  the  lands  used  slave  labour  for  their  cultiva- 
tion. The  free  brave  husbandman  of  earUer  days,  the  father  of 
a  family,  capable  of  defending  both  his  household  and  his  country, 
gradually  disappeared;  the  cities  became  full;  and  the  city 
population  was  apt  to  be  both  idle  and  turbulent.  Nor  were 
even  the  rich  satisfied ;  they  contended  with  each  other  for 
supremacy ;  and  though  civil  war  in  its  most  serious  form  did 
not  begin  till  the  first  century  before  Christ,  there  were  premoni- 
tions of  it  earlier,  and  most  especially  in  the  riots  which  caused 
the  death  of  the  Gracchi.  The  two  Gracchi,  Tiberius  and  Caius, 
were  the  ineffectual  wise  men  of  Rome  (just  as  Demosthenes  had 
been  the  ineffectual  wise  man  of  Athens) ;  they  estimated  the 
danger  which  menaced  their  country  accurately,  and  they  brought 
in  laws,  which  on  the  whole  we  cannot  but  commend,  to  remedy 
the  evil  and  avert  the  danger ;  but  it  was  beyond  their  power  to 
carry  out  their  design,  and  they  perished  in  the  attempt,  Tiberius 
in  133  B.C.,  Caius  twelve  years  later. 

The  deepest  difficulties  of  the  Roman  repubHc  began  from  that 
moment ;  but  here  let  me  pause,  and  revert  to  the  morality  and 
the  reUgion  which  had  been  in  the  worthier  times  which  had  gone 
before.  Perhaps  this  is  the  best  place  to  quote  that  elaborate  and 
interesting  comparison  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  religions  which 
the  recent  great  historian  of  Rome,  Mommsen,  gives  towards  the 
end  of  the  second  chapter  of  the  first  book  of  his  History  of  Rome : 

"  In  Italy,  as  in  Hellas,"  writes  Mommsen,  "  there  lies  at  the  foundation 
of  the  popular  faith  the  same  common  treasure  of  symbolic  and  allegorical 
views  of  nature;  on  this  rests  that  general  analogy  between  the  Roman 
and  the  Greek  world  of  gods  and  spirits  which  was  to  become  of  so  much 
importance  in  later  stages  of  development.  In  many  of  their  particular 
conceptions  also .  .  .  the  two  modes  of  worship  do  not  by  mere  accident 
coincide.  Yet  in  Hellas,  as  in  Italy,  they  assumed  a  shape  so  thoroughly 
national  and  peculiar,  that  but  little  of  the  ancient  common  inheritance 
was  preserved  in  a  recognisable  form. .  .  . 

"  The  Greek,  when  the  thunder  rolled  among  the  mountains,  saw  Zeus 
brandishing  his  bolts  on  Olympus ;  when  the  blue  sky  again  smiled  upon 
him,  he  gazed  into  the  bright  eye  of  Athensea,  the  daughter  of  Zeus ;  but 
so  powerful  over  him  was  the  influence  of  the  forms  which  he  had  thus 
created,  that  he  soon  saw  nothing  in  them  but  human  beings  invested  and 


208  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  [oh. 

illumined  with  the  splendour  of  nature's  power,  and  freely  formed  and 
transformed  them  according  to  the  laws  of  beauty.  It  was  in  another 
fashion,  but  not  less  strongly,  that  the  deeply  implanted  religious  feeling 
of  the  Italian  race  manifested  itself;  it  held  firmly  by  the  idea,  and  did 
not  suffer  the  form  to  obscure  it.  As  the  Greek,  when  he  sacrificed,  raised 
his  eyes  to  heaven,  so  the  Roman  veiled  his  head;  for  the  prayer  of  the 
former  was  vision,  that  of  the  latter  reflection.  Throughout  the  whole 
of  nature  he  adored  the  spiritual  and  the  universal.  To  everytliing  existing, 
to  man  and  to  the  tree,  to  the  state  and  to  the  storeroom,  a  spirit  was 
assigned,  which  came  into  being  with  it,  and  perished  along  with  it ;  the 
counterpart  in  the  spiritual  domain  of  the  physical  phenomenon;  to  the 
man  the  male  Genius,  to  the  woman  the  female  Juno,  to  the  boundary 
Terminus,  to  the  forest  Silvanus,  to  the  circling  year  Vertumnus,  and  so 
on  to  every  object  after  its  kind.  In  occupations  even  the  steps  of  the 
process  were  spiritualised ;  thus,  for  example,  in  the  prayers  for  the  husband- 
man there  was  invoked  the  spirit  of  fallowing,  of  ploughing,  of  furrowing, 
sowing,  covering-in,  harrowing,  and  so  on  to  those  of  in-bringing,  up-storing, 
and  opening  of  the  granaries.  In  like  manner,  marriage,  birth,  and  ev-ery 
other  physical  event  were  endowed  with  sacred  life.  The  larger  the  sphere 
embraced  in  the  abstraction,  the  higher  rose  the  god,  and  the  reverence 
paid  by  man.  Thus  Jupiter  and  Juno  are  the  abstractions  of  manhood 
and  womanhood ;  Dea  Dia,  or  Ceres,  the  creative  power ;  Minerva,  the 
power  of  memory ;  Dea  Bona,  or  among  the  Samnites  Dea  Cupra,  the  good 
Divinity. .  .  . 

"  Thus  the  two  nations,  in  which  the  civilisation  of  antiquity  culminated, 
stand  side  by  side  as  different  in  development  as  they  were  in  origin  identical. 
The  points  in  which  the  Hellenes  excel  the  Italians  are  more  universally 
intelligible,  and  reflect  a  more  brilliant  lustre ;  but  the  deep  feeling  in  each 
individual  that  he  was  only  a  part  of  the  community,  a  rare  devotedness 
and  power  of  self-sacrifice  for  the  common  weal,  an  earnest  faith  in  its  own 
gods,  formed  the  rich  treasure  of  the  Italian  nation.  Both  nations  received 
a  one-sided  and  therefore  each  a  complete,  development ;  it  is  only  a  pitiful 
narrow-mindedness  that  will  object  to  the  Athenian,  that  he  did  not  know 
how  to  mould  his  state  like  the  Fabii  and  the  Valerii ;  or  to  the  Roman, 
that  he  did  not  learn  to  carve  like  Phidias,  and  to  write  like  Aristophanes. 
It  was  in  fact  the  most  peculiar  and  the  best  feature  in  the  character  of 
the  Greek  people,  which  rendered  it  impossible  for  th<Mn  to  advance  from 
national  to  political  unity  without  at  the  same  time  exchanging  their 
polity  for  despotism.  The  ideal  world  of  beauty  was  all  in  all  to  the  Greeks, 
and  compensated  them  to  some  extent  for  what  they  wanted  in  reality. 
Wherever  in  Hellas  a  tendency  towards  national  union  appeared,  it  was 
bas(;d,  not  on  influences  directly  political,  but  on  games  and  art;  the 
contests  at  Olympia,  the  poems  of  Homer,  the  tragedies  of  Euripides, 
were  tlie  only  bonds  that  held  Hellas  together.  Resolutely,  on  the  other 
hand,  tin-  Italian  surrendered  his  own  personal  will  for  the  sake  of  freedom, 
and  learned  to  t)bey  his  father  that  he  miglit  know  how  to  obey  the  State. 
In  such  Hubjection  as  this  individual  development  might  be  marred,  and 
the  germs  of  fairest  {)roiniso  in  man  might  be  arrested  in  the  bud ;  the 
Italian  gained  instead  a  feeling  of  fatherland  and  of  patriotism  such  as  the 
Greek  never  knew,  and  alone  among  all  the  civilised  nations  of  antiquity, 
succeeded  in  working  out  national  unity  in  connexion  with  a  constitution 
based  on  self-government — a  national  unity,  which  at  last  placed  in  his 


vm]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  209 

hands  the  supremacy,  not  only  over  the  divided  Hellenic  stock,  but  over 
the  whole  known  world." 

As  far  as  the  Roman  religion  is  concerned,  the  exposition  in 
that  passage  is  admirable ;  the  reflective  spirit  of  the  Roman,  and 
his  wiUingness  to  sacrifice  himself  for  the  sake  of  the  State,  are 
justly  dwelt  upon ;   and  the  reader  will  see  how  that  moderation 
of  temper,  and  absence  of  narrowness  in  deaKng  with  all  friendly 
persons,  which  I  have  noted  as  causes  of  the  constant  unbroken 
development  of  Rome  in  the  early  centuries,  sprang  from  the 
religious   disposition  described   by  Mommsen.     One   quality   of 
the  Romans  which  I  have  not  yet  mentioned,  which  on  the  whole 
was  good  though  it  had  its  weak  side,  was  their  humility  in  matters 
of  religion ;  they  were  willing  to  learn,  in  their  earliest  days  from 
the  Etruscans,  afterwards  from  the  Greeks ;    they  never  thought 
they  had  attained  to  the  acme  of  knowledge  in  this  sphere.     It  is  c 
true  that  this  quality  was  accompanied  by  one  drawback,  that  the   / 
obedience  which  it  implied  was  liable  to  become  mechanical;   , 
there  was  some  want  of  the  upward  spontaneous  leap  of  the  ) 
individual  soul,  out  of  its  own  natural  needs,  to  the  Divine  Power ;   ( 
and  hence  that  careful  organisation  of  religion  which  went  on  in 
the  Roman  state  during  the  three  centuries  of  the  early  republic    ) 
(from  its  beginning  onwards)  was  coincident  with  a  gradual  drying    ) 
up  of  the  first  sources  of  religion  in  the  Roman  spirit^.    Thus  true   ) 
religion  had  to  be  renewed  from  outside ;   and  Greek  philosophy,  ^ 
learned  by  the  Romans  in  the  course  of  the  second  century  before 
Christ,  did  in  fact  supply  (and  especially  in  its   Stoic  form)  a 
current  of  real  piety,  pure  though  not  impetuous,  which  was  of 
great  service  to  the  ruling  minds  of  Rome  during  the  two  or  three 
centuries  which  followed. 

But  now  let  me  say  that  Mommsen,  in  the  passage  I  have 
quoted,  is  less  complete  in  his  characterisation  of  the  Greek 
religion,  than  in  his  characterisation  of  the  Roman  religion.  It 
is  the  popular  Greek  religion  which  he  describes ;  the  reHgion  of 
Homer  and  Hesiod,  utilised  half  jestingly  by  Aristophanes, 
cautiously  satirised  by  Euripides,  and  again  more  or  less  revived 
by  Theocritus  in  the  court  of  the  Ptolemies.  But  Mommsen's 
remarks  do  not  at  all  apply  to  that  deep  channel  of  religious  feeling 
which  emerged  first  in  the  Orphic  mysteries  and  in  the  school  of 
Pythagoras ;  which  appears  in  Pindar  and  vEschylus  and  Sopho- 
cles, and  again,  mingled  with  a  critical  element,  in  Socrates  ;  which 

^  This  is  one  of  Mr  Warde  Fowler's  most  important  observations ;  see  his  Religious 
Experience  of  the  Roman  People,  pp.  226-8. 

M.  D.  A.  14 


210  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  [CH. 

Plato  received  and  handed  down,  and  which  among  all  the  doubts 
which  advancing  knowledge  was  sure  to  bring  and  did  bring, 
preserved  and  nurtured  the  habit  of  reverence  among  Greek 
philosophers. 

From  these  Greek  philosophers  it  flowed  eventually  into  the 
greatest  minds  of  Rome.  There  was  a  second  flowering  time  of 
religion  in  Italy,  after  the  first  had  decayed;  and  we  must  not 
for  a  moment  think  that,  in  the  first  century  before  Christ,  the 
hearts  of  the  noblest  Italians  had  ceased  to  beat  with  the  impulse 
that  searches  after  things  invisible.  The  philosophical  pages 
of  Cicero  will  show  us  how  far  this  was  from  being  the  case ;  and 
Cicero,  it  must  be  remembered,  gathered  up  into  brief  compass 
the  thoughts  which  had  been  growing  throughout  Italy  for  a 
hundred  years  before  his  date.  Impossible  as  it  is  to  deny  the 
political  degradation  which  had  come  upon  Italy  during  those 
hundred  years,  through  the  covetousness  and  pride  of  the  rich, 
and  through  the  bloody  civil  wars  of  Marius  and  Sulla,  it  must 
still  be  said  that  there  were  many  on  Italian  soil  who  nobly  con- 
tended against  that  degradation.     The  famous  line  of  Terence — 

Homo  sum;  humani  nihil  a  me  alienum  puto 
— though  derived  probably  from  his  Greek  models,  was  received 
with  applause  by  the  Romans ;  and  the  political  rights  which  the 
Romans  voluntarily  accorded  to  the  Italians  after  the  close  of  the 
Marsic  war  were  an  evidence  that  they  would  have  equalised  the 
rights  of  all  men,  had  it  been  in  their  power  to  do  so.  But  the 
solution  of  that  great  problem,  how  to  accord  equal  rights  to  all 
men,  is  still  beyond  us  in  the  twentieth  century  after  Christ ;  how 
much  more  was  it  beyond  the  men  of  two  thousand  years  ago ! 

Let  nie  in  this  place  pay  a  tribute,  which  ought  not  to  be 
withheld,  to  the  more  honourable  position  accorded  to  women  in 
Rome  and  Italy  than  was  accorded  to  them  in  Greece,  and  still 
more  as  compared  with  their  position  in  the  greater  number  of 
oriental  States  (among  the  Jews  however  it  would  seem  that 
greater  honour  was  paid  to  thorn).  The  superiority  of  the  Romans 
in  this  respect  was  no  doubt  due  to  their  greater  sanity  and  more 
studious  observance  of  right  in  everyday  intercourse,  as  compared 
with  the  ordinary  temper  of  the  Greeks  ;  they  were  more  generous 
in  these  homely  matters  than  the  Greeks  were;  and  they  did  not 
altogether  lose  this  characteristic  even  in  that  period  of  civil  war 
and  bloodshed  which  ushered  in  the  close  of  the  republican  times. 

Yet,  when  we  take  the  prot'oundest  points  of  morality,  Greece 
was  the  teacher  of  Rome.     That  is  the  final  point  which  must  be 


vm]  ANCIENT   RELIGION:    ROME  211 

urged  in  favour  of  the  Greeks ;  but,  having  said  it,  the  proficiency 
of  the  pupils  is  the  final  theme  of  this  chapter. 

I  have  spoken  of  Cicero ;  and  though  Cicero  as  a  philosopher 
has  not  the  brilliance  of  Plato,  nor  the  immense  range  of  thought 
of  Aristotle,  yet  he  has  a  common-sense,  an  impartiahty,  a  tender- 
ness of  feeling,  which  makes  him  not  an  unworthy  follower  of 
those  great  Greeks,  He  was,  besides,  a  political  power  in  Rome ; 
and  if  he,  and  the  great  and  magnanimous  soldier  Pompey,  and 
the  entire  senate  of  Rome,  feU  before  the  victorious  arms  of 
Caesar,  it  must  not  be  assumed  that  the  cause  of  the  senate  was 
therefore  initially  a  bad  one,  or  even  a  hopeless  one  after  Caesar's 
victory.  That  which  made  it  hopeless  was  the  murder  of  Caesar 
by  the  passionate  partisans  of  the  senatorial  party ;  that  was  the 
act  which  enthroned  material  force,  as  distinguished  from  im- 
partial counsel,  in  the  supreme  place,  as  arbiter  of  the  world ; 
and  after  this  the  senate  had  no  locus  standi.  Cicero  had  no  share 
in  the  murder  of  Caesar ;  but  he  cannot  be  acquitted  of  condoning 
the  murder  after  it  had  taken  place.  It  was  one  of  the  faults  of 
a  man  of  singular  worth. 

As  to  Caesar,  the  extraordinary  force  of  his  character  needs  no 
demonstration.  We  must  not  say  that  the  restoration  of  the 
old  Roman  republic  was  in  his  day  an  absolute  impossibility; 
but,  practically  speaking,  it  was  a  task  beyond  human  power. 
What  Caesar  gave  the  Romans  was  four  centuries  and  a  half 
of  comparative  peace ;  not  wholly  without  turbulent  episodes ; 
but  still  a  period  during  which  mankind  might  reflect  on  the 
deepest  problems  of  life  and  human  nature,  and  during  which 
incontestably  very  deep  thoughts  did  come  into  collision,  and  out 
of  which  issued,  not  indeed  immediate  peace  and  order  (far  from 
it !)  but  the  beginning  of  a  new  world.  That  Caesar  was  an  inspir- 
ing force  cannot  be  said ;  his  task  was  to  build  that  protective 
structure  of  which  I  spoke  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter ;  and 
he  performed  that  task  with  great  ability. 

Meanwhile,  though  the  peculiar  virtue  of  republican  Rome 
had  died,  much  still  remained  that  was  admirable  in  the  moral 
region.  Who  can  forget,  or  fail  to  honour,  the  great  soul  of  Virgil  ? 
He  was  not,  it  is  true,  a  political  force,  like  Cicero  ;  he  accepted  the 
empire ;  but  all  that  was  possible  of  honourable  life  under  the 
empire  received  from  him  sympathy  and  praise.  Religion  was  to 
him  a  great  and  worthy  mystery ;  he  accepted  that  Pythagorean 
or  Platonic  form  of  it  which  told  how  erring  souls  are  purged  and 
renovated  after  death,  and  return  to  mortal  bodies  upon  eartjhi 

14—2 


212  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  [oh. 

for  a  new  trial.  To  him,  the  whole  visible  world  was  steeped 
in  a  divinity  that  was  its  natural  essence ;  yet  in  equal  measure 
he  bore  in  mind  that  the  Divine  Power  streams  into  men  from 
an  outside  source ;  the  Gods  were  to  him  no  mere  abstraction. 
The  beautiful  life  of  the  country,  with  its  overflowing  sources  of 
strength  and  happiness,  was  dear  to  his  heart ;  and  with  a  sublime 
humility,  he  honoured  that  deeper  science  which  he  could  not 
appropriate  by  his  own  intellect.  History  was  to  him  a  revelation ; 
and  by  a  not  dishonourable  mistake,  he  thought  that  the  imperial 
power  of  Rome  was  itself  the  magic  spell  which  should  call  into 
life  a  reign  of  everlasting  peace  over  the  whole  earth. 

VirgU  and  Cicero  were  the  two  greatest  Roman  writers  (Italian 
rather  let  me  say) ;  and  not  only  the  greatest,  but  also  the  two 
most  animated  by  a  feeling  of  hope,  the  two  most  capable  of 
generating  a  freedom  of  the  spirit,  when  civic  freedom  had  been 
lost.  But  under  that  mighty  protective  aegis  which  Caesar  had 
stretched  over  all  the  nations  of  the  western  world,  it  was  not 
Itahans  alone  who  contended  for  spiritual  supremacy  ;  from  Egypt, 
from  Palestine,  from  Asia  Minor,  from  Babylon  and  Persia,  the 
throng  of  missionaries  came,  representatives  of  many  ancient 
religions.  The  issue  of  that  struggle — a  greater  struggle  than  that 
waged  by  material  warfare — cannot  be  told  in  the  present  chapter ; 
it  must  suffice  here  to  enumerate  the  spiritual  forces  which  Italy 
sent  into  the  field ;  which,  though  distinguished  rather  by  variety 
than  by  any  skill  of  organisation,  were  not  despicable.  When 
I  speak  of  the  spiritual  forces  which  Italy  sent  into  the  field,  it 
must  be  understood  that  the  spirit  of  Greek  philosophy  had 
thoroughly  permeated  Italy,  long  before  the  Roman  empire  was 
established  on  a  secure  basis ;  and  though  the  Greeks  continued  to 
be  less  strong  but  more  subtle  than  the  Italians,  yet  in  the  theories 
of  life  very  little  difference  existed  between  tlie  two  nations. 
If  Virgil  and  Cicero  were  the  two  greatest  Italian  writers,  the 
Stoics  were  the  most  powerful  philosophers  during  the  two  cen- 
turies before,  and  the  two  centuries  after,  the  Christian  era ;  and 
the  religion  which  they  brought  with  them  was  one  of  singular 
dignity.  In  so  far  as  they  fell  short  of  perfect  truth,  it  was  rather 
because  the  true  transcendentalism  had  not  dawned  upon  their 
view,  than  from  any  failure  of  theirs  in  the  ethical  field.  Their 
philosophy  is  well  worth  understanding,  and  as  no  one  known  to  me 
has  so  well  explained  it  as  Ferrier  (of  whom  I  spoke  in  my  preface) 
it  will  be  proper  to  (juote  here  two  passages  from  his  cxj^osition. 
The  first  is  a  general  characterisation  of  the  ethics  of  Stoicism  : 


VIII]  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  213 

The  germ  of  the  Stoical  moraUty  seems  to  lie  in  some  such  proposition 
as  this :  All  good,  all  happiness,  all  virtue,  consists  in  a  conformity  to  law, 
just  as  all  evil,  all  misery,  all  vice,  consists  in  lawlessness,  in  a  repudiation 
or  violation  or  defiance  of  law.  Submission  to  law,  acqmescence  in  the 
established  order  of  the  universe,  this  seems  to  be  the  principle,  and  indeed 
the  sum  and  substance,  of  their  moral  code.  That  being,  I  think,  the  general 
root  of  their  system,  we  have  now  to  consider  the  details  into  which  it 
branches.  And  I  ask  what  is  the  law,  a  conformity  with  which  is  equivalent 
to  good,  is  eqviivalent  to  happiness,  is  equivalent  to  virtue  ?  The  answer, 
so  far  as  mian  is  concerned,  seems  to  be  this :  To  be  virtuous  and  happy, 
man  must  conform  first  to  the  law  of  his  own  nature ;  secondly,  he  must 
conform  to  the  law  by  which  society  is  held  together;  thirdly,  he  must 
conform  to  the  law  of  Providence.  A  life  in  conformity  with  these  three 
laws,  or  rather  three  classes  of  laws,  is,  and  must  be,  a  life  of  virtue  and 
happiness.  But  here  it  has  to  be  asked.  By  means  of  what  principle  is 
man  to  find  out  these  laws  ?  how  is  he  to  discover  what  they  are,  and  what 
they  enjoin  ?  By  what  principle  is  he  to  know  when  he  is  obeying  the 
laws  of  his  own  nature,  and  when  he  is  violating  them  ?  By  what  principle 
is  he  to  know  when  he  is  obeying  the  laws  of  society,  and  when  he  is  violating 
them?  By  what  principle  is  he  to  know  when  he  is  obeying  the  laws  of 
God,  and  when  he  is  violating  them?  He  is  enabled  to  know  this,  the 
Stoics  say,  by  the  principle  of  reason,  so  that  their  general  ethical  doctrine, 
stated  more  explicitly,  amounts  to  this,  "  Man  is  happy  and  virtuous  in 
proportion  to  the  degree  in  which,  iinder  the  guidance  and  enlightenment 
of  reason  and  knowledge,  he  conforms  or  accommodates  himself,  first,  to 
the  law  of  his  own  nature ;  secondly,  to  the  law  of  society ;  thirdly,  to  the 
law  of  Providence.  "  Lectures  and  Philosophical  Remains  of  James  Frederick 
Ferrier,  vol.  i.  pp.  422-3. 

It  will  be  seen  that  by  "reason"  is  here  intended  spiritual 
vision;  and  a  good  many  questions  might  be  asked  as  to  the 
meaning,  and  as  to  the  trustworthiness,  of  this  spiritual  vision; 
and  also  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  three  laws  laid  down  in  the  above 
extract  as  fundamental.  The  true  law  of  one's  own  nature,  of 
society,  or  of  God,  is  not  always  that  which  on  a  first  view  usurps 
the  name ;  the  governing  element  may  he  below  the  surface. 
Allowing  these  difficulties,  which  were  not  fully  met  by  the  Stoic 
philosophers,  there  is  much  truth  in  the  above  mapping  out  of 
the  Hnes  of  duty;  the  leading  parts  of  it  are  given  with  a  broad 
correctness.  The  scheme,  too,  may  be  justly  considered  rehgious 
as  well  as  ethical ;  the  religious  sphere  is  truly  entered  on ;  though 
when,  leaving  the  general  conception  of  God,  or  the  Gods,  we  ask 
how  the  Divme  Presence  is  made  known  to  us,  and  how  it  affects 
our  whole  being  here  or  hereafter,  the  defect  of  the  Stoics  appears. 
They  were  too  much  afraid  of  the  doubt  which  surrounds  these 
questions  to  be  able  to  grasp  them  strongly,  and  win  conclusive 
answers.  Hence  they  failed  when  confronted  with  the  chaos  of 
human  passions.     They  trusted  too  much  to  the  power  of  tha 


214  ANCIENT    RELIGION:    ROME  [oh. 

human  spirit.  The  truth  which  they  missed  was  this ;  that  the 
everlasting  love,  which  is  itself  an  incorruptible  passion,  and  which 
is  nourished  by  God,  and  which  continually  wins  more  and  more 
souls  to  itself,  is  the  only  power  capable  of  bringing  harmony  into 
the  multiform  impulses  of  men. 

The  blessed  fire  of  eternal  passionate  love  was  wanting  to  the 
Stoics;  but  it  is  an  unjust  accusation  against  them  to  say  that 
they  were,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word,  apathetic.  In 
defence  of  them  against  such  a  charge,  the  second  passage  from 
Ferrier,  to  which  I  referred  above,  may  be  quoted.  Ferrier  writes 
thus: 

In  considering  this  third  paradox  of  the  Stoics,  which  represents  a 
passionless  or  apathetic  condition  as  the  highest  virtue  of  the  soul,  we 
must  remember  that  their  apathy  did  not  consist  in  insensibility,  or  in 
a  deeidness  of  feeling;  it  did  not  consist  in  an  extinction  or  eradication  of 
the  pa.ssions.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  character  of  their  virtuous  man 
they  included  rational  desire  and  aversion ;  they  included  love  and  parental 
aSection,  friendship,  and  a  general  charity  and  benevolence  to  all  mankind ; 
they  considered  it  as  a  duty  arising  out  of  our  very  nature  not  to  neglect 
the  welfare  of  public  society,  but  to  be  ever  ready,  according  to  our  station 
or  capacity,  to  act  either  the  magistrate  or  the  private  citizen.  Their 
apathy  was  no  more  than  a  freedom  from  perturbations,  from  irrational 
and  excessive  agitations  of  the  soul ;  it  was  an  antagonism  put  forth  against 
the  passions,  not  with  a  view  of  extinguishing  them,  but  merely  of  pre- 
venting them  from  running  into  excess ;  and  consequently  that  paradoxical 
apathy  commonly  laid  to  their  charge,  and  in  the  demolishing  of  which 
so  many  imaginary  triumphs  have  been  achieved,  was  an  imaginary  apathy 
for  which  they  were  in  no  way  accountable.  Lectures  and  Philosophical 
Remains  of  James  Frederick  Ferrier,  vol.  i.  pp.   434-5. 

It  was  Pansetius,  the  friend  of  the  younger  Scipio,  who  first 
made  the  Romans  acquainted  with  Stoicism ;  but  to  us  moderns 
the  most  famous  names  connected  with  this  philosophy  occur  in 
the  centuries  after  the  Christian  era.  The  emperor  Marcus 
Aurelius  has  had  great  recognition  of  late ;  and  indeed  few  writers 
have  put  sound  precepts  more  tersely.  But  was  he  more 
worthy  of  honour  than  the  slave  Epictetus  ("poor  and  lame,  but 
beloved  by  the  Gods");  or  than  Seneca,  who  alone  among  the 
Romans  protested  against  the  deadly  gladiatorial  combats,  on  the 
ground  of  the  sacredness  of  humanity ;  or  than  the  pure-minded 
Persius  (dying  too  young)  who  reproved  the  souls  bowed  down  to 
earth  and  careless  of  heavenly  things?  Juvenal  can  hardly  be 
claimed  by  the  Stoics ;  yet  in  the  vigorous  close  of  his  tenth 
Satire,  there  are  touches  of  piety  which  have  some  kinship  with 
Stoicism. 

Can  the  Epicureans  be  regarded  as  a  spiritual  force  ?    Yes,  we 


vm]  ANCIENT   RELIGION:    ROME  215 

must  say  so,  in  some  degree;  the  quality  of  attraction  cannot 
be  denied  to  the  enthusiastic  Lucretius,  the  tenderly  humorous 
Horace.  It  is  unjust  to  think  of  Epicurus  and  his  followers  as 
men  devoted  to  luxury.  The  reverse  is  the  case ;  they  upheld, 
and  in  the  main  followed,  a  simple  Ufe.  They  were  numerous  in 
the  Roman  world :  a  tranquil  sociableness  was  their  characteristic ; 
and  some  honour  must  be  given  to  such  a  temperament.  Yet 
their  force  was  not  equal  to  that  of  Stoicism ;  they  did  not 
recognise  how  much  labour  is  necessary  for  the  reformation  of 
men  individually,  and  of  the  world  ^. 

As  to  the  great  historians,  Livy  and  Tacitus,  they  were  rather 
a  hght  than  a  force ;  but  a  light  is,  in  some  degree,  a  force ;  and 
when  the  influences  that  centred  in  imperial  Rome  are  being 
reckoned  up,  their  names  must  not  be  omitted. 

In  this  chapter  I  have  brought  the  narrative  down  to  the  very 
verge  of  that  outburst  of  religious  life  from  which  our  modem 
world,  with  its  wide-reaching  and  multiform  activities,  has  sprung : 
in  my  next  chapter  I  must  go  back  again  to  the  dimly  discerned 
origins  of  history. 

^  An  appreciative  study  of  Epicurus  and  his  followers  will   be   found  in  Epi- 
cureanism, by  William  Wallace,  M.A. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE   FIRST   SEED   OF   A   PERFECT   FAITH:     ABRAHAM 
AND    MOSES 

The  great  religions  whose  history  I  have  briefly  sketched  in 
the  seven  foregoing  chapters  deserve  serious  attention  from  us. 
They  were  efforts  after  right  morahty  and  just  insight ;  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  they  benefited  the  nations  which  embraced 
them ;  with  all  their  errors,  they  are  not  to  be  styled  in  merely 
condemnatory  fashion,  "false  religions."  Still,  the  aspiration 
which  hit  the  true  mark,  the  faith  which  has  shown  itself  capable 
of  throwing  off  errors,  and  expanding  with  a  new  beneficence 
after  each  liberation  from  error,  thereby  winning  for  itself  an 
eternal  progress,  has  not  so  far  been  described  in  the  present  work. 
I  come  to  it  now  ;  and  the  first  historical  character  in  whom  it  ap- 
pears is  that  ancient  hero  and  patriarch  whom  we  name  Abraham. 

But  in  mentioning  Abraham,  I  come  to  the  Bible ;  and  it  is 
impossible  to  treat  of  the  Bible,  or  of  Biblical  history,  without 
in  the  first  instance  letting  it  be  clearly  seen  what  one  holds  to  be 
the  real  authority  of  the  Bible  in  ethics  and  in  regard  to  historical 
facts,  especially  in  the  miraculous  narratives.  Tiie  main  purport 
of  what  I  shall  say  on  these  points  must  justify  itself  by  the 
explanation  of  history  which  it  affords ;  but  some  probability 
should  be  seen  to  belong  to  it  from  the  outset. 

Four  hundred  years  ago,  it  was  the  universal  opinion  of 
Christians  that  the  moral  teaching  of  the  Bible  was  unerring, 
and  the  Biblical  narratives  true,  without  exception  or  qualification. 
Such  an  opinion  at  the  present  day  is  rare ;  nor  can  it  be  justified. 
It  is  true  that  the  Biblical  morality  contains  very  valuable 
elements  even  from  the  first,  and  it  is  in  many  respects  an  indis- 
pensable guide  to  us ;  but  we  find  in  it  the  errors,  partly  of  a  rude 
race,  but  still  more  of  a  religion  which  had  not  been  able  to  deliver 
itself  from  formalism,  and  in  which  the  grounds  of  judgment  are 
often  hard  and  t<'chnical,  and  cruel  conduct  meets  with  approba- 
tion.    Who,  for  instance,  can  defend  the  command  which  Samuel 


CH.  IX]  ABRAHAM  AND  MOSES  217 

(supposed  to  be  acting  by  divine  inspiration)  gave  to  Saul,  to  go 
and  destroy  an  entire  community  of  the  Amalekites,  men,  women, 
and  children,  on  the  ground  that  the  ancestors  of  these  Amalekites, 
some  hundred  years  before,  had  attacked  the  Israelites  immediately 
after  their  exodus  from  Egypt?  Even  in  the  original  conflict 
the  Amalekites,  according  to  the  record,  were  defeated ;  but  apart 
from  that,  the  Bible,  in  its  better  and  purer  portions,  declares 
that  the  sons  shall  not  be  punished  for  the  wrong-doing  of  their 
fathers ;  and  so  we  all  hold  now.  Similarly  there  are^  cruel  and 
perfidious  acts  of  David  which  pass  entirely  without  censure  in 
the  Bible,  and  are  not  held  to  derogate  from  his  title  to  be  called 
a  man  after  God's  own  heart,  who,  it  is  said^,  "did  that  which 
was  right  in  the  eyes  of  Jehovah,  and  turned  not  aside  from  any- 
thing he  commanded  him  all  the  days  of  his  life,  save  only  in  the 
matter  of  Uriah  the  Hittite."  So  likewise  the  act  of  Ezra,  which 
is  assumed  in  the  Bible  to  be  the  carrjdng  out  of  a  divine  obligation, 
in  making  the  Jews  put  away  all  wives  who  were  born  of  a  foreign 
race — and  not  only  the  wives,  but  the  children  of  those  wives — 
is  not  to  be  morally  justified.  I  need  not  multiply  instances; 
it  is  plain  that  there  are  moral  defects  in  the  Bible ;  whatever 
the  merits  of  the  Biblical  teaching  (and  they  are  real),  we  must 
keep  our  moral  judgment  awake  when  we  read  it. 

In  view  of  this,  we  shall  be  prepared  to  find  that  the  historical 
records  of  the  Bible  are  not  always  exact.  It  is  little  more  than 
half  a  century  since  the  conflict  was  waged  among  religious  persons 
in  England  as  to  the  literal  truth  of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis. 
That  chapter,  noble  in  its  spiritual  tone,  is  now  justly  considered 
on  its  material  side  to  be  of  the  nature  of  a  parable ;  it  does  not 
describe  sequences  of  actual  fact.  The  discoveries  of  geology 
made  this  clear ;  and  the  discoveries  of  geology  presently  made 
it  also  clear  that  the  race  of  man  had  existed  on  earth  long 
before  the  time  which  the  Bible  assigned  to  Adam  and  Eve. 
Hence  the  second  and  third  chapters  of  Genesis,  as  well  as 
the  first,  must  be  held  to  be,  in  so  far  as  they  really  deserve  our 
acceptance,  symbolic  truth  and  not  actual  history.  I  think 
there  is  some  true  instinct  in  the  second  and  third  chapters,  as 
also  there  is  a  true  instinct  pervading  the  first  chapter,  but  such 
instinct  is  not  the  instinct  of  the  historian ;  and  when  it  is 
granted  that  these  chapters  are  not  literal  truth,  we  see  that 
the  writer  of   them  did  not   draw   any    broad   line   between   a 

1  See  for  instance,  1  Samuel  xxvii.  7-12. 
^  1  Kings  XV.  5. 


218      THE  FIRST  SEED   OF  A  PERFECT  FAITH:     [ch. 

fabulous  narrative  with  some  underlying  truth  involved  in  it, 
and  real  history.  Is  it  possible  that  we  should  not  regard  a  good 
deal  in  the  subsequent  chapters  of  Genesis,  after  the  first  three, 
as  composed  rather  with  a  view  to  edification,  than  as  warranted 
by  actual  evidence?  Few  more  impossible  narratives  than  that 
of  the  flood  have  ever  been  conceived;  and  the  tower  of  Babel 
is  a  scarcely  less  evident  fiction.  We  are  not  in  the  region  of 
history  here.  Even  if  some  grains  of  real  fact  are  contained  in 
the  first  eleven  chapters  of  Genesis,  they  are  not,  until  we  come  to 
the  very  end  of  the  eleventh  chapter,  extricable  from  the  rest. 
But  at  the  end  of  the  eleventh  chapter  we  come  to  Abraham ; 
and  in  Abraham  we  have,  I  believe,  a  real  historical  character. 

Before  however  treating  of  Abraham,  it  is  necessary  to  speak 
of  one  feature,  very  common  throughout  the  whole  Biblical 
history,  on  which  a  judgment  must  be  formed  initially :  I  mean 
the  miraculous  element  in  the  Bible  generally.  A  full  discussion 
of  the  question  of  miracles  carmot  indeed  be  entered  upon  in  this 
place,  but  must  wait  till  I  come  to  the  New  Testament  history ; 
for  the  New  Testament  miracles  are  supported  by  evidence  much 
more  nearly  contemporary  than  is  the  case  with  those  of  the 
Old  Testament ;  and  the  main  discussion  of  this  question  will 
properly  be  placed  in  that  part  where  the  evidence  is  the  strongest ; 
still  I  must  say  something  about  it  here. 

It  may  be  thought  that  I  have  already  spoken  of  the  miraculous 
element  in  the  Bible  in  relation  to  the  first  eleven  chapters  of 
Genesis ;  but  the  marvellous  tales  in  those  chapters  are  not  exactly 
miracles  in  the  same  sense  in  which  the  plagues  of  Egypt  and  the 
pavssage  of  the  Red  Sea  by  the  Israelites  are  miracles ;  they  are 
not  insisted  on  as  important  because  of  their  marvellousness. 
The  early  history  of  every  nation  is  apt  to  contain  extraordinary 
and  impossible  stories,  devised  for  the  sake  of  the  pleasure  given 
by  the  exercise  of  the  imagination  ;  such  stories  are  called  legends ; 
and  the  word  legend  may  very  properly  be  applied  to  the  stories 
of  the  flood  and  of  the  tower  of  Babel,  and  also  to  some  later  parts 
of  the  book  of  Genesis ;  for  instance  to  the  fiery  destruction  of 
Sodom  and  Gomorrah  and  the  colloquies  of  Abraham  with  Divine 
Beings  before  that  destruction ;  and  also  to  some  part  of  the 
history  of  Joseph.  But  it  is  not,  in  any  of  these  legends,  asserted 
or  implied  that  the  things  done  by  God  were  done  specifically  for 
the  purpose  of  giving  evidence  of  God's  existence  and  power,  and 
evidence  that  should  be  handed  down  to  all  future  generations. 
Now  this  is  the  affirmation  most  pointedly  made  in  the  Bible 


IX]  ABRAHAM   AND   MOSES  219 

respecting  the  whole  series  of  miracles  in  the  Exodus  of  the  Israelites 
from  Egypt,  and  in  their  desert  wanderings ;  and  it  is  also  made 
as  clearly,  though  not  with  such  stress  and  frequency  of  affirmation, 
respecting  the  miracle  of  Elijah  in  calling  down  fire  from  heaven 
on  Mount  Carmel ;  and  we  must  suppose  it  implied  in  the  miracles 
of  Joshua,  and  also  in  those  narrated  in  the  book  of  Daniel. 

It  seems,  at  first  sight,  as  if  we  were  compelled  to  choose  one 
of  two  alternatives;  either  the  acceptance  practically  of  these 
miracles,  or  at  any  rate  of  the  greater  part  of  them,  or  the  rejection, 
not  only  of  the  miracles,  but  of  the  doctrines  which  they  are 
brought  forward  to  prove ;  that  is,  the  existence  and  power  of 
God,  his  special  care  and  providence  exercised  towards  the  people 
of  Israel,  and  in  the  final  result  his  care  and  providence  exercised 
towards  all  the  peoples  of  the  world.  These  very  important 
doctrines  have  in  all  ages  been  accepted  by  Christians ;  and  though 
the  doctrine  of  God's  providence  is  not  peculiar  to  either  the 
religion  of  Israel  or  to  Christianity,  still  a  belief  in  the  miracles 
of  the  Old  Testament  has  been  very  closely  entwined  with  the 
grounds  on  which  Christian  preachers  have  inculcated  the  doctrine 
of  God's  providential  care  for  mankind ;  and  if  we  think  the  narra- 
tives of  those  miracles  mistaken  (as  certainly  I  do  think  them 
mistaken),  the  question  necessarily  follows,  whether  the  doctrines 
which  have  been  so  habitually  associated  with  them  are  not 
mistaken  likewise ;  and  especially  whether  the  belief  that  God 
had  any  peculiar  relation  towards  the  people  of  Israel  ought  not 
to  be  discarded. 

Those,  however,  who  remember  how  intricately  truth  and 
error  are  apt  to  be  intertwined  in  the  thoughts  of  men,  will  be 
aware  of  the  possibility  that  the  apparent  premiss  put  forward 
as  the  ground  on  which  we  should  believe  in  God's  providence 
(whether  on  behalf  of  Israel  or  for  mankind  at  large)  is  not  the 
true  premiss.  The  psalmists  and  prophets  of  Israel,  however  much 
they  may  have  appealed  to  miracles  as  a  ground  for  their  faith 
in  God  (but  indeed  these  appeals  are  much  less  common  in  the 
prophets  than  in  the  psalmists),  had  a  deeper  ground  in  their  own 
consciousness ;  and  to  this  ground  another  may  have  been  added  in 
the  history  of  their  race,  a  history  which  was  wonderful  even  if  not 
miraculous.  This,  indeed,  I  believe  to  be  the  true  account  of  the 
matter.  In  the  very  remarkable  Israelite  history,  the  wonder 
was,  to  the  popular  mind,  externalised ;  a  divine  power  had  really 
carried  Israel  through  many  dangers,  but  not  a  power  manifested 
in  the  slaughter  of  enemies  or  in  the  dividing  of  the  sea ;  a  power. 


220      THE  FIRST  SEED  OF  A  PERFECT  FAITH:      Lch. 

rather,  which  strengthened  the  great  men  of  the  nation  inwardly, 
and  enabled  them  to  strengthen  their  fellows,  and  to  survive  the 
sufferings  of  a  hard  slavery  first,  and  of  a  journey  afterwards 
through  a  parched  and  barren  wilderness,  and  lastly  to  overcome 
the  hostile  resistance  of  the  tribes  of  Palestine  among  whom  they 
settled,  and  whom  they  conquered — with  much  slaughter  no 
doubt  but  still  with  a  certain  amount  of  peaceful  assimilation  to 
themselves. 

It  may  be  asked,  indeed,  whether  in  thus  interpreting  the 
history  we  are  not  going  contrary  to  the  evidence.  But  when 
the  evidence  is  weighed,  this  is,  I  think,  not  so.  The  recorded 
miracles  of  the  Exodus  are  confessed  to  have  produced  no  effect 
at  all  on  the  religious  disposition  of  the  vast  majority  of  those 
who  are  said  to  have  witnessed  them.  The  mass  of  the  Israelites 
had  not,  for  many  generations,  the  smallest  objection  to  worship- 
ping idols,  or  to  worshipping  deities  other  than  Jehovah^.  Pure 
monotheism  was  for  a  long  time  confined  to  a  small  minority  of 
the  nation ;  an  ardent  minority  no  doubt,  who  did  in  the  end  make 
their  belief  prevail ;  but  it  was  long  before  the  Israelites  at  large 
shared  it.  Abraham  began,  and  Isaac,  Jacob,  Joseph,  Moses, 
Joshua,  all  inherited  the  monotheistic  tradition ;  so  did  Samuel, 
and  Samuel's  great  protege,  David ;  so,  at  first,  did  Solomon ; 
but  Solomon,  through  motives  of  policy,  and  influenced  by  his 
wives,  fell  off  into  the  ordinary  polytheism.  The  kings  of  Judah 
after  Solomon,  desperately  weakened  though  they  were  by  the 
revolt  of  the  ten  tribes,  did  on  the  whole  adhere  to  monotheism, 
but  Manasseh  wholly  abandoned  it,  and  during  his  long  reign  the 
cause  of  monotheism  seemed  utterly  lost.  But  when  he  died, 
the  worshippers  of  Jehovah  took  heart,  and  made  their  great, 
and  in  the  end  successful,  stroke.  They  had  long  believed  in 
the  miracles  of  the  Exodus ;  their  experience  did  not  suggest  to 
them  any  doubt  on  the  subject,  insufficient  though  the  evidence 
was  ;  and  they  (or  no  doubt  one  among  them)  wrote  a  book  which 
was  the  first  form  of  our  book  of  Deuteronomy ;  the  purpose  of 
which  book  was  to  enforce  the  reality  of  those  miracles,  and  the 
lessons  drawn  from  them.  That  this  was  the  book  said,  in 
2  Kings  xxii,  to  have  been  discovered  by  liilkiah  the  priest  in  the 
temple  in  the  reign  of  Josiah,  is  shown  by  the  nature  of  its  contents  ; 
for  the  obligation  is  in  it  imposed  on  the  nation  to  have  only  one 
sacrificial  shrine,  an  obligation  never  thought  of  before  the  reign 

*  With  rcsjKTt  to  tho  nanu'  .Jehovah,  which  would  be  more  accurately  written 
Yahweh,  see  the  appendix  to  the  present  chapter. 


IX]  ABRAHAM   AND   MOSES  221 

of  Hezekiah,  but  very  naturally  conceived  by  the  priesthood  at 
Jerusalem,  and  a  very  natural  support  to  the  worship  of  Jehovah 
alone,  which  was  the  desire  (and  the  just  desire)  of  the  most  ardent 
members  of  the  Jerusalem  priesthood.  That  the  composition  of 
the  book  of  Deuteronomy  was  an  untruthful  act  never  entered 
the  head  of  the  writer  of  it,  or  of  those  who  sanctioned  the  writing 
of  it ;  history  was  in  that  age  hardly  distinguished  from  poetry ; 
and  the  impassioned  exhortations  of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy, 
its  promises  and  its  threatenings,  began  from  that  moment  to 
sink  into  the  minds  of  the  people  of  Judah.  Hence  came  the 
religious  legislation  of  Josiah ;  but  it  took  more  than  a  hundred 
years  after  Josiah's  time,  and  the  bitter  suffering  of  the  Baby- 
lonian captivity,  to  bring  over  the  mass  of  the  Jewish  people 
to  a  religion  of  pure  monotheism.  It  was  a  work  which  on  the 
whole  was  right,  and  rightly  done ;  but  we  must  be  prepared  to 
find  that  not  everything  was  right  in  the  accompHshment  of  it; 
and  the  composition  of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  was  a  work  that 
could  not  at  the  present  day  be  done  with  a  pure  conscience.  In 
those  days  it  was  different;  the  conscience  of  men,  in  these 
matters  of  literature,  was  still  uninformed. 

If,  in  spite  of  the  above  remarks,  it  be  still  asked,  whether  it 
be  not  simpler  to  accept  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  as  what  it 
professes  to  be,  namely  the  composition  of  Moses  himself,  or  at 
any  rate  a  genuine  record  of  his  discourses  to  the  Israelites,  it 
must  be  answered,  first,  that,  if  the  elaborate  commands  of  the 
book  of  Deuteronomy  had  really  been  made  by  Moses  and  preserved 
from  age  to  age  with  sedulous  care,  it  is  incredible  that  the  com- 
mand contained  in  the  thirteenth  verse  of  the  twelfth  chapter  of 
Deuteronomy  (and  implied  all  through  that  chapter)  should  have 
remained  entirely  unknown  until  the  reign  of  Josiah.  I  say, 
entirely  unknown ;  for  though  the  doctrine  that  in  all  Israel  there 
must  be  only  one  sacrificial  shrine  was  acted  upon  by  Hezekiah, 
nearly  a  century  before  Josiah's  time,  it  is  nowhere  said  that  he 
so  acted  in  obedience  to  a  specific  written  command.  Hezekiah 
put  down  the  country  shrines,  because  it  was  impossible  to  keep 
idolatry,  and  the  worship  of  alien  deities,  out  of  them ;  and  this 
was  Josiah's  motive  too,  though  in  Josiah's  time  the  authority 
of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  was  brought  in  to  support  the  genuine 
reason.  If  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  had  been  known  by  the  great 
judge  Samuel,  by  the  great  kings  David  and  Solomon,  and  by 
the  reforming  kings  Asa  and  Jehoshaphat,  how  are  we  to  account 
for  their  entire  ignoring  of  it  in  this  particular;    for  the  high 


222      THE   FIRST  SEED   OF  A  PERFECT  FAITH:      [oh. 

places  (i.e.  the  sacrificial  shrines  scattered  over  the  country)  went 
on  all  through  the  times  of  those  distinguished  persons^  ? 

Besides  this  point  of  the  single  sanctuary,  the  careful  reader  of 
the  book  of  Deuteronomy  will  observe  that  that  book  (chapter 
xvii,  14-20)  gives  instructions  as  to  the  choice  of  a  king  over 
the  Israelites  in  the  times  to  come  and  as  to  his  conduct  when 
chosen :  how  came  it  that  when  the  Israelites  asked  of  Samuel 
in  his  old  age  to  make  them  a  king  (a  request  with  which  he  did  in 
fact  comply),  he  made  no  reference  to  this  most  pertinent  passage 
of  Deuteronomy,  but  used  words  which  were  really  inconsistent 
with  his  knowing  it,  and  in  particular  told  the  Israelites  that  their 
request  was  a  sin  ?  If  Samuel  knew  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  he 
was  bound  to  refer  to  this  passage  of  it,  so  important  for  the  issue 
which  the  Israelites  had  raised.  If  Samuel  did  not  know  of  the 
book  of  Deuteronomy  (and  wc  must  infer  from  his  silence  that  he 
did  not),  where  was  it  in  his  time? 

It  is  also  noticeable  that  the  account  of  the  relations  of  the 
Israelites  and  Edomites,  given  in  Deuteronomy  ii.  1-8  and  28,  29, 
is  quite  different  from,  and  inconsistent  with,  the  account  of  those 
relations  as  given  in  Numbers  xx.  14-21, 

It  is  then  not  at  all  a  simple  account  of  the  matter  to  say  that 
the  book  of  Deuteronomy  contains  a  true  account  of  the  discourses 
of  Moses  to  the  Israelites ;  and  it  is  further  to  be  observed  that 
when  in  2  Kings  xxii,  the  book  of  the  law  is  said  to  have  been 
found,  that  most  important  question,  how  the  book  came  into 
being,  and  what  had  happened  to  it  before  it  was  found,  is  not 
in  the  least  raised  in  the  narrative ;  a  question  quite  essential, 
if  the  book  was  to  be  regarded  as  a  genuine  statement  of  the  law 
given  by  Moses.  Further,  if  we  are  to  take  the  book  of  Deuteronomy 
as  a  true  record,  we  must  believe  that  Moses  commanded  that  the 
whole  book,  at  any  rate  down  to  the  end  of  the  twenty-sixth 
chapter,  should  be  written  upon  the  stones  of  an  altar  on  mount 
Ebal,  to  be  dedicated  after  the  Israelites  had  crossed  over  the  Jordan 
into  Palestine  (Deuteronomy  xxvii.  2-8);  a  command  which  the 
book  of  Joshua  (viii.  30-32)  affirms  to  have  been  really  carried 
out.  How  important  an  act,  if  true!  But  can  one  believe  it, 
when  not  a  single  mention  of  the  writing  thus  engraved  upon 
stones  is  found  in  all  the  subsequent  books  of  the  Old  Testament? 

^  Sco  1  Samuel  vii.  •),  x.  H,  xi.  15,  xvi.  B:  1  Kings  iii.  ',i,  4,  xv.  11-14,  xxii.  4:{-4»). 
The  very  curious  iiarraf ivc  in  .lortluia  xxii.  ouj^lit  not  to  Ix'  left  unnicntioncd  in  rtlation 
to  this  (|u<'stion  of  the  oljlipation  on  the  Israelites  to  have  only  one  sarrificial  shrine. 
It  is  a  i)al|)al)ly  fictitious  narrative,  invented  tt)  iUustrate  the  command  in  Deuteronomy 
xii.  ll{.  Had  it  been  a  true  narrative,  the  oontiuct  of  Samuel  (not  to  s|K'ak  of  (ithor 
persons)  would  be  altogether  inexplicable. 


IX]  ABRAHAM   AND   MOSES  223 

The  conclusion,  then,  to  be  drawn  from  the  facts  just  mentioned 
is  that  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  not  precisely  as  it  stands  but  in 
some  primitive  form  of  it,  was  written  not  very  long  before  the 
period  at  which  it  is  said  to  have  been  discovered,  that  is,  not  very 
long  before  the  eighteenth  year  of  the  reign  of  king  Josiah. 
And  now  observe  what  follows.  The  book  of  Deuteronomy  is  by 
far  the  greatest  support  of  miracle  in  the  whole  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment ;  the  most  serious  argumentative  support,  that  is ;  for 
though  every  miraculous  narrative  is  in  some  degree  or  other 
a  support  of  miracle,  the  proneness  of  the  human  mind  towards 
marvels  is  so  well  known,  especially  among  races  at  so  rudimentary 
a  stage  of  development  as  the  Israelites  when  they  conquered 
Canaan,  that  we  should  naturally  explain  the  miracles  of  the 
books  of  Exodus  and  Numbers  as  ancient  legends — legends  with 
a  background  of  truth  no  doubt,  but  not  Kteral  reaUties.  It  is 
the  book  of  Deuteronomy  which  stands  in  the  way  of  this  conclusion 
— which  insists  that  the  miracles  of  the  Exodus  and  of  Mount 
Sinai  are  literal  truths,  designed  by  God  himself  for  the  instruction 
of  the  Israehtes  first,  of  all  mankind  afterwards.  If  however  the 
book  of  Deuteronomy  was  written  six  centuries  after  the  Exodus, 
can  the  argument  contained  in  it  stand  ?  Evidently  not ;  the 
testimony  in  it,  strong  if  Moses  be  supposed  to  be  the  true  author 
of  it,  becomes  weak  when  we  see  that  it  was  written  long  after  his 
date. 

That  the  general  tenor  of  the  history  goes  to  support  this 
view,  I  think  will  appear ;  and  not  least  through  the  unfavourable 
moral  results  which  came  through  the  belief  in  miracles.  But 
it  is  impossible  to  discuss,  in  a  work  like  the  present,  every  piece 
of  testimony  that  could  be  brought  forward  in  favour  of  miracles. 
When  I  come  to  speak  of  the  particular  books  in  which  miracles 
are  related  or  referred  to,  something  will  be  said  about  each  of 
those  books  in  turn,  with  the  view  of  showing  in  what  way  we 
ought  to  regard  them ;  but  as  preliminary  to  the  whole  subject, 
the  above  discussion  must  suffice. 

A  brief  reference  to  the  miraculous  element  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment cannot  however  be  quite  dispensed  with  here,  though  it 
cannot  as  yet  be  discussed  in  its  entirety.  The  history  must  be 
taken  in  order ;  and  the  Old  Testament  must  be  treated  in  the 
first  place  on  its  own  basis.  Yet  I  may  say  that  the  New  Testa- 
ment has  never  been  out  of  my  thoughts ;  and  I  am  not  aware 
of  anything  therein  contained  which  ought  to  modify  what 
I  have  just  said  respecting  the  Old  Testament. 


224      THE   FIRST  SEED  OF  A  PERFECT  FAITH:      [ch. 

That  when  the  miraculous  element  is  taken  away,  the  divine 
element  remains ;  that  the  Old  Testament  history  is  a  great  and 
worthy  one ;  these  are  the  points  now  to  be  made  clear.  The 
chief  other  correction  of  the  traditional  views  which  will  appear 
in  the  following  sketch  (in  the  present  and  succeeding  chapters) 
lies  in  the  later  date  which  will  be  assigned  to  some  of  the  books ; 
especially  to  most  of  the  psalms,  to  parts  of  the  book  of  Isaiah, 
and  to  the  book  of  Daniel.  But  I  must  reserve  the  subject  of 
these  books  till  I  come  to  them  in  the  natural  course  of  the  history. 
Of  the  date  of  composition  of  the  Pentateuch  generally  I  cannot 
here  speak  with  any  detail ;  the  final  construction  of  it  can  hardly 
have  been  earlier  than  the  return  from  the  Babylonian  captivity ; 
but  some  of  the  separate  narratives  in  it  must  have  been  very 
much  earlier. 

To  Abraham  I  now  return;  and  in  him  we  do  touch  solid 
ground.  It  is  true  that  his  history  cannot  have  been  committed 
to  writing  for  centuries  after  his  death ;  for  though  writing  was 
used  in  his  age,  it  was  used  by  comparatively  few,  and  those  few 
were  not  nomads,  as  Abraham  was.  Had  writing  been  used  by 
Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob,  the  fact  could  not  have  escaped 
mention.  But  the  agreements  made  by  these  patriarchs  are 
never  written  agreements,  though  they  certainly  would  have 
been  so  if  writing  had  been  a  habitual  means  of  communication 
with  them  (see  Genesis  xxiii.  16-18,  xxvi.  28-31,  xxxi.  44,  45); 
and  Joseph,  in  sending  a  message  to  his  father  (xlv.  13,  27)  makes 
no  use  of  writing.  Yet  this  characteristic  of  the  book  of  Genesis 
is  rather  a  favourable  sign  as  regards  the  general  truthfulness  of 
the  accounts  of  these  patriarchs  (though  not  as  regards  their 
detailed  accuracy) ;  the  age  is  so  far  correctly  represented.  It  is 
natural  that  writing  among  the  Israelites  should  have  taken  its 
start  in  Egypt,  probably  with  Moses  himself :  this  is  what  we 
should  infer  from  the  Bible  (Exodus  xvii.  14,  and  compare  1  Samuel 
XV.  2 ;  Exodus  xxiv.  4).  The  style  of  it  was  no  doubt  rude,  and 
long  written  narratives  cannot  have  been  possible  till  a  much 
more  settled  time. 

Our  evidence  then  is  imperfect.  Yet  oral  testimony  is  not 
vahieloss ;  and  in  the  chief  points  of  Abraham's  character  and 
history  there  is  an  explanatory  force,  which  ought  to  convince 
us  of  their  truth.  This  is  so,  whether  we  regard  Abraham  in  his 
relation  to  antecedent  times,  as  the  purifier  of  a  worship  that  had 
become  coarse  and  sensual :  or  in  his  relation  to  the  after  history, 
as  the  first  man  in  whose  soul  the  far  future  was  definitely  imaged 


IX]  ABRAHAM  AND    MOSES  225 

as  clothed  with  an  ideal  hope  and  aim.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed 
that  all  the  clan  which  followed  Abraham  appropriated  or  under- 
stood Abraham's  highest  thoughts,  or  even  that  they  could 
understand  a  worship  of  God  from  which  all  idolatry  was  severely 
removed.  Such  purity  of  religious  temper  was  not  speedily  to  be 
attained  by  a  large  number  of  men.  But  the  belief  in  a  Divine 
Power,  to  whom  man  is  bound  by  ties  of  loyal  reverence  and 
affection,  and  who  cherishes  the  faithful  man  and  sends  vigour 
into  his  children  and  into  his  children's  children  for  aU  generations, 
this  belief  was  handed  down  by  Abraham  to  after  times ;  it  was 
the  animating  force  of  his  chief  descendants,  and  slowly  permeated 
an  entire  nation,  stimulating  them  towards  virtue ;  though  it  is 
true  that  it  was  afterwards  subject  to  narrowing  influences,  through 
the  imperfection  which  belongs  to  aU  formulated  ideals. 

But  in  Abraham  himself  there  was  no  narrowness.  The 
preeminence  which  he  believed  to  be  reserved  by  the  Divine  Will 
for  his  descendants  did  not  make  him  discourteous  or  unfriendly 
to  the  nations  among  whom  he  moved.  He  traversed  the  land 
with  his  clan  of  a  thousand  persons  or  more;  but  much  larger 
and  more  settled  tribes  lay  round  about  him ;  a  peaceful  temper 
was  necessary  for  his  preservation.  But  indeed  his  far-seeing 
hope  made  him  peaceful ;  he  did  not  desire  his  own  aggrandise- 
ment. His  soul  rested  in  a  communing  with  God ;  for  this  he  had 
left  his  home  in  Chaldea,  and  the  idolatrous  religion  which  he 
himself  in  his  early  years  had  practised;  it  was  on  the  future, 
not  the  present,  that  his  thoughts  were  bent.  Under  what  name 
did  he  think  of  God  ?  Probably  under  the  somewhat  vague  plural 
form  "Elohim,"  "the  Divine  Powers,"  and  not  under  the  name 
"Jehovah" ;  the  book  of  Exodus  seems  more  right  here  than  the 
book  of  Genesis ;  though  the  question  is  not  quite  an  easy  one ; 
but  on  the  whole  it  does  seem  to  have  been  Moses,  and  not  the 
elder  patriarchs,  who  first  emphasised  and  laid  stress  on  the  name 
"Jehovah." 

The  religion  of  Abraham,  though  ardent,  was  less  definite 
than  that  of  his  warlike  successor  Moses;  but  wholly  indefinite 
it  was  not.  H  the  divinest  of  Abraham's  instincts  was  that  in 
which  he  heard  God  saying  to  him,  "In  thee  and  in  thy  seed  shaU 
all  the  families  of  the  earth  be  blessed,"  he  received  a  more  definite 
forecast  of  the  future  in  the  words,  "Unto  thy  seed  will  I  give 
the  land  of  Canaan."  These  are  the  two  promises  which  God  is 
held  to  have  made  to  Abraham ;  but  we  cannot  look  upon  them 
as  equally  divine.     They  represent  two  differing  ideals,  the  one 

M.  D.  A.  15 


226      THE   FIRST  SEED   OF   A   PERFECT   FAITH:      [ch. 

i  higher  and  the  other  lower ;  the  higher  and  the  lower  intermingling 
i|  with  each  other  as  they  are  wont  to  do  in  all  the  thoughts  of  men. 
We  may  trace  them  in  the  subsequent  history,  each  ideal  pursuing 
its  separate  course.  The  earthly  ideal  rose  into  prominence 
through  Moses,  and  culminated  in  David  and  Solomon ;  but  then 
was  shattered  from  within  and  gradually  swept  away ;  and  though 
as  long  as  Israelites  or  Jews  are  a  force  in  the  world,  it  is  not 
impossible  that  they  may  re-unite  and  dwell  in  the  land  of  Palestine 
(or  Canaan),  this  if  accomplished  would  be  but  a  very  subordinate 
result  amid  the  expanding  destinies  of  mankind.  It  was  in  the 
heavenly  ideal  of  Abraham  that  the  vital  hope  of  the  future  lay ; 
and  this  began  to  germinate  and  expand  exactly  when  the  earthly 
ideal  was  beginning  to  vanish.  As  the  kingdoms  of  Israel  and 
Judah  sank,  the  prophets  of  Israel  and  Judah  arose ;  and  the 
prophetic  burden  was,  that  from  their  nation,  the  nation  chosen 
of  God,  should  proceed  the  reign  of  justice  and  mercy  over  all  the 
earth.     And  that  ideal  can  never  vanish. 

Those  who  note  how  this  double  development  was  fulfilled  in 
the  history  of  Israel,  who  note  also  how  unconscious  the  Israelites 
always  were  that  it  was  a  double  development,  proceeding  in 
two  directions,  and  who  then  note  how  the  two  branches  of  the 
development  are  both  clearly  involved  in  the  mind  and  thoughts 
of  Abraham,  as  that  is  recorded  in  the  book  of  Genesis,  will  see 
in  this  fact  a  decisive  vindication  of  the  historical  reality  of 
Abraham.  The  history  of  Israel,  which  so  remarkably  needs 
explanation,  is  explained  by  the  character  of  Abraham ;  and  there 
is  no  other  explanation  of  it. 

Let  me  come  to  the  details.  That  Abraham  truly  came  out 
of  the  land  of  the  Chaldees,  and  truly  made  the  land  of  Canaan 
his  home  afterwards,  living  more  or  less  a  nomad  life,  we  may 
safely  believe,  for  this  is  the  key  to  the  subsequent  history.  That 
his  religious  feeling,  and  his  habitual  sense  of  the  presence  of  a 
Divine  Helper  with  whom  he  held  intercourse,  led  him  to  adopt 
the  rite  of  circumcision,  is  probably  true;  for  religious  feeling 
naturally  shows  itself  in  external  signs.  Circumcision  was  a 
symbol  of  self-sacrifice,  and  the  need  of  self-sacrifice  was  deeply 
implanted  in  Abraham  ;  it  is  likely  too  that  he  would  welcome 
such  a  symbol  as  distinguishing  himself  and  his  clan  from  the 
idolaters  around  him.  That  considerations  of  health  had  weight 
with  him  in  practising  this  rite,  is  not  likely;  his  ordinary  life 
favoured  healtii,  and  the  same  would  be  true  of  those  who  were 
his  subordinates;    the  searchings  ot    his  spirit   were   in   another 


IX]  ABRAHAM   AND   MOSES  227 

direction,  namely  how  to  render  his  life  approved  to  the  Being  to 
whom  the  allegiance  of  his  heart  was  given. 

When  we  read  of  the  intercom'se  between  God  and  Abraham, 
of  God  speaking  and  Abraham  replying,  we  must  not  think 
(in  spite  of  the  form  of  the  words)  of  verbal  speech,  but  rather  of 
such  intercourse  as  God  has  with  men  now ;  of  the  upHfted  and 
recipient  heart,  and  of  the  impression  made  on  the  suppliant  as 
he  tries  with  God's  help  to  determine  the  lines  of  duty.  When 
we  look  at  the  matter  in  this  way,  we  shall  see  that  the  divine 
communications  would  not  have  that  sharpness  of  outhne  and 
unmistakable  clearness  of  meaning  which  the  ordinary  reader  of 
the  Bible  thinks  is  implied  in  the  Biblical  narrative ;  rather  they 
would  be  shado wings  and  indications  of  truth,  broad  in  their 
general  effect,  but  liable  to  be  misconceived  in  their  application 
to  details.  This  is  indeed  a  consideration  which  we  need  to  bear 
in  mind  all  through  the  Old  Testament;  the  historians  give  a 
preciseness  of  form  to  the  divine  commands  (and  indeed  to  the 
history  generally)  which  the  information  at  their  command  did 
not  really  justify. 

There  are  naturally  many  things  in  the  history  of  Abraham 
as  related  in  the  book  of  Genesis  which  are  of  a  legendary  rather 
than  of  a  historical  character ;  and  among  these  may  be  particu- 
larly mentioned  the  ancestral  relation  which  he  and  his  nephew 
Lot  are  said  to  have  had  towards  so  many  of  the  surrounding 
peoples — ^Ishmaehtes,  Midianites,  Moabites,  Ammonites,  and 
Edomites ;  perhaps  even  the  Amalekites ;  but  the  affiliation  of 
the  Midianites  and  Amalekites  is  not  so  distinctly  affirmed  as  in 
the  case  of  the  other  races.  That  the  Moabites  and  Ammonites 
and  Edomites  (the  last  named  especially)  were  races  kindred  with 
the  Israelites  is  implied  through  all  the  history,  and  is  no  doubt 
true. 

The  history  of  Abraham's  wanderings,  whether  in  Palestine 
or  in  Egypt,  does  no  doubt  rest  upon  a  basis  of  truth ;  and  it  is 
probable  also  that  he  had  a  nephew  Lot,  and  a  son  Ishmael,  as 
the  Bible  relates.  That  Isaac  was  his  son  and  heir,  has  a  stronger 
degree  of  probability ;  and  I  say  this  especially  because  of  the 
famous  narrative  of  Abraham's  attempted  sacrifice  of  his  son 
Isaac,  which  in  the  end  was  not  actually  carried  out.  I  cannot 
but  think  that  this  narrative  rests  on  a  true  basis ;  and  that  the 
act  attributed  to  Abraham  is  one  in  which  true  religion  and  super- 
stition are  apt  to  be  mistaken  for  one  another  (as  they  have  so 
often  been  mistaken  in  history  afterwards) ;    an  act  in  which 

1&— 2 


228      THE   FIRST  SEED   OF  A  PERFECT  FAITH:      [ch. 

a  motive,  up  to  a  certain  point  good  and  right,  is  made  subservient 
to  wrong  and  injurious  action.  In  Abraham's  case,  happily,  the 
injurious  action  was  not  accomphshed. 

That  Abraham  was  a  great  and  ruling  spirit,  is  apparent  even 
from  what  I  have  already  said ;  but  it  does  not  follow  from  this 
that  he  was  incapable  of  error;  and  his  profoundest  thoughts 
were  those  in  which  he  was  most  likely  to  be  led  astray,  owing  to 
the  obscurity  of  the  subjects  involved.  He  saw,  as  we  all  see, 
the  vast  depth  at  which  mankind  lie  below  an  ideal  perfection ; 
the  sin  and  misery  of  the  world  were  plain  to  him ;  he  could  not 
hope  that  any  man  would  altogether  escape  the  touch  of  this 
untoward  condition.  He  felt,  what  one  of  the  greatest  of  the 
prophets  of  Israel  expressed  in  words  many  centuries  afterwards : 
"I  am  a  man  of  unclean  lips,  and  I  dwell  in  the  midst  of  a  people 
of  unclean  lips."  Abraham  could  not  write,  and  could  not  there- 
fore transmit  any  such  testimony  respecting  himself  and  his 
contemporaries  to  posterity ;  but  the  act  of  which  I  am  now 
speaking,  the  attempted  sacrifice  of  his  son,  shows  that  he  felt  it. 
A  man  so  great  as  he  could  not  but  endeavour  to  solve  the  deep 
problem  of  human  duty  in  a  more  comprehensive  manner  than 
others;  "If  I  am  to  bring  to  an  end  these  deep  ills  of  humanity, 
what  does  God  require  of  me  in  the  way  of  action  ?  "  he  asked  himself. 

Stories  of  those  ancient  times  (though  not  of  quite  such  remote 
antiquity  as  Abraham)  tell  us  of  wild  chieftains  who  for  some 
deeply  desired  end  consented  to  sacrifice  their  children,  thinking 
that  the  divine  favour  was  to  be  won  thereby.  Such,  in  Israelite 
history,  was  Jephthah ;  such,  in  Greek  history,  was  Agamemnon. 
Whatever  we  may  think  of  these  two  heroic  figures,  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  such  deeds  were  done  ;  done  with  tears  and  sighing, 
it  is  more  than  likely  ;  but  then  it  was  the  tears  and  sighing  which 
proved  the  value  of  the  sacrifice.  It  was  not  for  any  such  specific 
end  as  that  for  which  the  vow  of  Jephthah  was  made,  or  for  which 
Agamemnon  allowed  his  daughter  to  be  slain,  that  Abraham  can 
be  conceived  to  have  taken  his  son  Isaac  to  a  distant  mountain, 
in  order  there  to  offer  him  as  a  sacrifice  to  God.  It  was  no  private 
advantage  that  he  desired ;  but  he  must  have  been  profoundly 
convinced  that  something  ought  to  be  offered  up  to  God,  in  order 
to  put  man  and  God  on  terms  of  abiding  intercourse  ;  and  whether 
from  the  example  of  others  or  from  his  own  suggestion,  he  deter- 
mined that  his  son  was  the  victim  demanded.  His  general 
thought,  that  man  must  render  his  whole  heartfelt  service  to 
God,  was  true ;   his  particular  application  of  it  was  not  true. 


IX]  ABRAHAM   AND    MOSES  229 

Had  he  slain  his  son,  he  would  have  committed  a  sin.  But 
to  go  up  to  the  verge  of  slaying  his  son  was  different  from  per- 
forming the  actual  deed ;  the  obscurity  of  his  moral  position  did  not 
permit  him  to  discern  at  once  the  error  of  the  act  contemplated ; 
and  as  long  as  he  beheved  it  to  be  right,  faithfulness  demanded 
that  he  should  carry  it  out.  Then,  at  the  last  moment,  when  he 
had  prepared  everything  for  the  deed,  and  was  about  to  perform 
it,  the  obscuring  film  dropped  from  the  eyes  of  his  spirit.  The 
consciousness  of  present  rectitude  was  in  him;  and  yet  he  was 
stayed  in  his  course.  The  divine  blessing  was  granted  him ;  yet 
he  returned  home  with  his  son  intact.  He  sacrificed,  the  Bible 
tells  us  (and  very  likely  truly)  a  ram  in  place  of  his  son. 

If  the  above  account  be  substantially  true  (and  in  speaking 
of  it  as  true,  I  am  far  from  implying  that  we  can  enter  into  the 
great  strain  and  trial  endured  by  Abraham,  or  that  we  can  appro- 
priate to  ourselves  his  full  mind) — but  if  it  be  true  as  regards  the 
main  current  of  his  thoughts,  then  we  must  think  of  him  as  one 
who  had  not  only  great  ideals,  but  also  a  solemn  sense  of  obhgations 
which  are  real,  and  yet  beyond  the  power  of  man  definitely  to 
conceive ;  of  obhgations  on  the  part  of  man  to  God,  the  Father  of 
our  spirits ;  with  whose  mind  our  minds  and  our  actions  must  be 
in  harmony,  according  to  our  measure,  if  we  are  to  receive  from 
him  strength  and  sustenance.  Abraham  anticipated  and  pre- 
figured a  certain  ordering  of  the  consciences  of  men,  which  he 
could  not  himself  definitely  accomplish ;  but  to  have  anticipated 
and  prefigured  it  was  a  great  thing,  and  the  effect  of  this  sense  of 
spiritual  duty  was  seen  in  all  his  race  afterwards. 

Of  Abraham  I  need  say  no  more.  Of  Isaac  we  know  httle 
that  is  distinctive,  though  we  must  hold  him  to  be  a  real  character ; 
but  the  picturesqueness  of  the  stories  which  relate  to  Jacob,  and 
to  Jacob's  favourite  son  Joseph,  strike  every  reader  of  the  Bible. 
The  element  of  romance  in  these  stories  is  obvious ;  but  it  would 
be  incorrect  to  think  that  there  is  therefore  no  ground  of  truth 
in  them.  What  we  learn  from  ancient  historians,  and  from  the 
monuments,  renders  such  an  event  as  the  migration  of  Jacob  and 
his  sons  and  the  whole  clan  into  Egypt  quite  a  possibility.  Egypt 
had  at  that  time  been  conquered,  and  was  being  governed,  by 
the  alien  race  of  the  Hyksos  or  Shepherd  kings,  who  themselves 
had  come  out  of  Canaan.  (See,  as  to  this,  Sayce's  Archceology 
of  the  Cuneiform  Inscriptions,  p.  145.)  One  of  these  kings  is  said 
to  have  entertained  Abraham  (Genesis  xii.);  and  another  of  the 
race  might  well  entertain  Abraham's  great-grandson  and  raise 


230      THE   FIRST  SEED   OF   A  PERFECT   FAITH:      [ch. 

him  to  high  authority,  without  any  offence  to  his  own  racial 
feeling. 

Apart  from  the  main  atory,  a  few  words  must  be  given  to  the 
relations  of  Jacob  to  his  twin  brother  Esau  (the  elder  of  the  two). 
The  passionate,  generous  character  of  Esau  excites  real  interest 
in  the  reader  of  the  Bible ;  and  the  duphcity  of  Jacob  in  deceiving 
his  father  Isaac  for  his  own  profit  and  against  the  interests  of 
Esau  excites  corresponding  indignation.  Yet  the  Biblical  his- 
torian does  not  appear  to  have  thought  that  Jacob  had  done 
anything  discreditable.  The  story  as  it  stands  is  an  improbable 
one ;  but  if  Esau  is  to  be  treated  as  a  real  person  (which  cannot 
be  held  quite  certain)  the  quarrel  between  him  and  Jacob  is  far 
from  improbable ;  and  we  may  hope  that  the  two  brothers  were 
reconciled  afterwards,  as  the  book  of  Genesis  in  a  very  affecting 
description  tells  us  that  they  were. 

The  chief  thread  of  the  story  of  Jacob  lies,  however,  apart  from 
Esau.  He  is  a  great  and  venerable  person,  and  the  modern  reader 
does  not  do  him  enough  honour ;  though  he  is  not  of  course  equal 
to  Abraham.  Yet  there  are  points  in  which  he  has  a  distinction 
even  above  Abraham.  He  was  the  first  of  the  patriarchs  to 
repress  idolatry  among  his  followers  (see  the  narrative  in  Genesis 
XXXV.  2-7).  He  exercised  a  natural  authority  in  doing  so,  and 
no  resentment  was  occasioned  by  it ;  we  must  not  parallel  this 
with  the  acts  of  intolerance  which  have  been  so  frequent  in  the 
world's  history.  In  addition  he,  with  the  aid  of  his  son  Joseph, 
kept  his  sons  in  harmony  and  union  together;  which  neither 
Abraham  nor  Isaac  appears  to  have  succeeded  in  doing.  The 
beautiful  story  of  Joseph  is  too  well  known  to  be  recounted  here ; 
his  forgiveness  of  his  brothers  after  great  wrongs  is  a  fact  too 
much  inwoven  into  the  whole  course  of  the  history  to  be  easily 
distrusted.  In  other  respects  it  is  possible  that  Joseph  was  not 
altogether  so  blameless  as  the  narrative  represents  him ;  and  we 
can  hardly  approve  of  the  agreement,  so  favourable  to  despotism, 
which  he  is  reported  to  have  made  between  the  Egyptians  and 
Pharaoh  as  to  the  land — an  agreement  which  it  would  appear  that 
the  Egyptians  had  no  choice  but  to  accept.  (Genesis  xlvii.  13-27.) 
Yet  he  must  have  been  a  man  of  great  ability  and  worth. 

There  was  no  principle  of  monogamy  among  these  ancient 
patriarchs,  and  .lacob  in  particular  was  not  a  monogamist;  yet 
the  story  of  his  love  for  Rachel  and  his  fourteen  years  service  for 
her  sake  is  the  most  tender  love  story  in  the  whole  Bible.  A  lofty 
sentiment  appears  also  in  his  assumption  (by  divine  command. 


IX]  ABRAHAM   AND   MOSES  231 

we  are  told)  of  the  name  of  Israel,  whether  we  interpret  this 
name  as  meaning  "a  prince  of  God"  or  "a  striver  with  God." 
A  chieftain  he  was,  with  a  great  following,  as  appears  both  from 
other  passages,  and  especially  from  the  story  of  the  murderous 
slaughter  which  two  of  his  sons  committed  on  the  people  governed 
by  Hamor  and  Shechem,  an  act  of  which  Jacob  himself  greatly 
disapproved.  That,  in  the  end,  he  went  down  to  Egypt  with  his 
sons  and  their  famihes  and  with  his  entire  clan,  at  the  invitation 
of  Joseph,  we  may  beheve. 

Those  two  ideals  cherished  by  Abraham,  of  which  I  spoke 
above,  the  earthly  ideal  which  consisted  in  his  descendants 
possessing  Canaan,  and  the  heavenly  ideal  which  consisted  in  the 
beneficent  influence  of  those  descendants  on  the  world  at  large, 
were  cherished  by  Jacob  also,  and  were  handed  down  by  him  to  his 
sons.  We  cannot  doubt  that  these  two  ideals,  and  the  main  outlines 
of  the  lives  of  the  eminent  men  in  whose  hearts  the  ideals  of  the 
future  had  been  conceived,  were  preserved  in  the  minds  of  the 
Israelite  race  all  through  the  time  of  their  sojourn  in  Egypt,  which 
for  the  greater  part  of  the  time  was  a  sojourn  in  bondage :  all 
else  was  forgotten,  but  these  things  were  not  forgotten.  This 
is  exactly  what  happened  in  the  time  of  the  Babylonian  captivity, 
a  thousand  years  later ;  for  in  the  Babylonian  captivity  also  we 
are  struck  with  the  extraordinary  disregard  which  the  captive 
Jews  showed  as  regards  their  contemporary  history,  and  the 
tenacity  with  which  they  clung  to  the  great  names  of  the  past. 
That  this  was  the  case  with  the  Israehtes  in  Egypt  also,  we  cannot 
doubt ;  and  it  is  notable  and  natural  that  they  took  their  national 
name  from  the  great  ancestor  who  actually  lived  at  the  time  of 
their  migration  into  Egypt,  rather  than  from  that  still  greater 
ancestor  who  was  the  originator  of  the  rehgious  spirit  which  was 
their  strength. 

It  is  a  great  landmark  of  history  at  which  I  have  now  arrived. 
As  there  have  been  many  critics  who  have  denied  the  real  existence 
of  Abraham,  so  there  have  been  some,  though  fewer,  who  have 
denied  that  the  Israelites  ever  sojourned  in  Egypt;  who  have 
treated  the  beginnings  of  Israelite  history  as  consisting  merely 
in  the  entrance  into  Canaan  of  an  indiscriminate  and  barbarous 
multitude,  children  of  the  desert.  Those  who  choose  to  abandon 
aU  sense  of  historical  sequence  and  causation  may  take  this  line ; 
such  critics  certainly  never  have  explained,  and  never  will  explain, 
how  that  complex  and  unique  phenomenon,  the  religion  of  Israel, 
took  its  rise.     Nor  do  I  believe  that  it  can  possibly  be  explained 


232      THE   FIRST  SEED   OF   A   PERFECT  FAITH:      [ch. 

except  by  following,  in  the  main,  the  Biblical  lines ;  with  of  course 
that  reserve  as  to  the  details  which  the  nature  of  the  narrative 
and  the  antiquity  of  the  period  enjoins  on  us. 

When  the  monarch  of  Egypt,  the  Pharaoh  of  that  epoch,  at 
the  request  of  Joseph,  admitted  Jacob  and  his  family  and  clan  as 
settlers  in  his  realm,  he  did  not  venture  to  grant  them  any  land 
in  the  populous  parts  of  Egypt ;  but  he  assigned  to  them  the  land 
of  Goshen,  bordering  on  the  desert,  a  tract  suited  to  a  pastoral 
community.  There  they  dwelt  in  peace  during  many  years; 
there  Jacob  died,  and  there  Joseph  died,  and  there  Joseph's 
brethren  died ;  and  for  how  much  longer  the  immigrant  Israelites 
remained  unmolested  we  do  not  know.  But  circumstances 
caused  a  change  adverse  to  them. 

We  read  in  Exodus  i.  7,  the  following  description  of  the  con- 
dition of  things  before  that  change  occurred : 

And  the  children  of  Israel  were  fruitful,  and  increased  abundantly, 
and  multiplied,  and  waxed  exceeding  mighty ;  and  the  land  was  filled  with 
them. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  remark  that  when  the  "children 
of  Israel "  are  spoken  of  at  the  time  of  their  entrance  into  Egypt, 
there  are  intended  not  merely  the  threescore  and  ten  persons 
joined  together  by  actual  blood-relationship,  enumerated  in 
Genesis  xlvi.  8-27,  but  also  the  clan  of  followers  and  subordinates, 
numbering  doubtless  a  thousand  or  more,  who  had  embraced, 
as  already  mentioned,  the  religious  belief  of  their  chiefs.  Though 
therefore  the  increase  of  the  Israelites  in  Egypt,  whereby  from 
a  clan  they  became  a  nation,  was  certainly  remarkable,  it  was  not 
miraculous.  But  to  their  actual  numbers  at  the  time  of  the 
Exodus,  and  to  the  causes  which  swelled  those  numbers,  I  must 
advert  presently. 

The  land,  vsays  the  book  of  Exodus,  was  filled  with  them. 
That  is  to  say,  they  had  increased  so  much  that  they  were  obliged 
to  go  out  of  the  land  of  Goshen,  which  had  been  assigned  to  them, 
and  to  make  homes  for  themselves  throughout  the  whole  extent 
of  Egypt  and  its  cities.  We  may  conceive  how  unpopular  this 
made  them.  The  Egyptians  would  not  oat  with  them  (Genesis 
xliii.  32),  nor,  as  we  must  suppose,  have  any  friendly  association 
with  them;  yet  here  were  the  Israelites  in  their  midst,  and  in 
such  near  vicinity  that  intimate  intercourse  would  under  ordinary 
circumstances  have  been  unavoidable.  The  Israelites,  never  liked 
from  the  first  moment  of  their  sojourn,  came  to  be  hated ;  and  at 


IX]  ABRAHAM    AND    MOSES  233 

last  events  took  a  turn  which  enabled  this  hatred  to  express  itself 
and  make  itself  felt. 

The  Hyksos  or  Shepherd  kings,  after  five  centuries  of  domi- 
nation, were  expelled  by  the  Egyptians ;  and  a  native  dynasty,  one 
of  the  most  powerful  that  ever  reigned  in  Egypt,  took  their  place. 
To  the  Israelites,  the  departure  of  their  protectors  meant  the 
exchange  of  liberty  for  slavery.  This  at  any  rate  was  true  of 
those  who  were  scattered  over  the  face  of  the  country ;  but  it  is 
quite  clear  from  the  narrative  that  there  were  IsraeUtes  not  in 
a  state  of  slavery,  and  it  is  reasonable  to  beheve  that  these  were 
those  who  had  remained  in  Goshen,  the  land  originally  assigned  to 
them.  But  by  far  the  greater  number  were  reduced  to  slavery, 
and  slavery  of  a  peculiarly  severe  kind,  among  a  people  who  had 
a  strong  dislike  of  them. 

Thus  began  that  long  conflict  between  the  race  of  Israel  and 
the  rest  of  mankind,  which  has  continued  ever  since ;  a  conflict 
not  always  acute,  but  of  unparalleled  persistence ;  a  conflict 
originating  in  the  conception  that  the  race  of  Israel  were  to  be, 
through  the  blessing  of  God,  the  supreme  benefactors  of  mankind. 
This  conception  has  indeed  been  singularly  vindicated  by  history, 
and  yet  has  been  marred  by  the  intermixture,  in  the  temperament 
of  that  race,  of  a  rigid  and  proud  exclusiveness.  But  I  must  not 
in  this  place  dwell  further  on  a  matter,  the  elucidating  of  which 
will  need  great  care  in  the  subsequent  chapters  of  this  work. 

Of  the  details  of  the  servitude  of  the  Israelites  in  Egypt  but 
Uttle  is  told  us.  We  learn  that  they  built  for  Pharaoh  two  "store 
cities,"  Pithom  and  Raamses.  From  this  one  would  infer  that 
they  were  collected  together  in  special  locaUties ;  and  this  may 
not  improbably  have  been  the  case.  There  may  possibly  have 
been  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  Egyptians  to  kill  off  all  the 
males  of  the  race,  as  is  related  in  Exodus  i.  15-22:  but  if  so,  it 
was  clearly  an  attempt  very  soon  abandoned.  All  through  this 
hard  time  the  leaders  of  the  Israelites  retained  the  sense  of  a  great 
destiny  reserved  for  them,  of  the  promises  of  God,  and  especially 
of  a  future  possession  of  the  land  of  Canaan ;  and  these  behefs 
would  not  be  without  influence  even  upon  the  mass  of  the  people. 
There  is  reason  to  think  (though  the  Bible  does  not  admit  this 
— see  Joshua  v.  5)  that  the  practice  of  circumcision  was  not 
steadily  kept  up  during  the  Egyptian  bondage ;  at  all  events 
the  strange  story  in  Exodus  iv.  24^26,  appears  to  indicate  that 
Moses  did  not  originally  circumcise  his  own  children ;  and  if  Moses 
was  remiss,  who  may  not  have  been  remiss  ? 


234      THE   FIRST  SEED   OF  A  PERFECT  FAITH:      [ch. 

The  name  of  Moses  brings  us  to  the  era  of  the  deliverance. 
How  are  we  to  think  of  that  famous  event?  Under  what  impulse, 
through  what  power,  did  the  Israelites  make  their  escape  from 
Egypt ;  and  did  they  achieve  freedom  through  God's  working  on 
their  behaK  ? 

Yes ;  but  as  I  have  already  intimated  in  this  chapter,  not  in 
the  manner  usually  understood,  but  in  a  manner  more  noble  than 
that  of  miracles.     Let  me  show  how  this  is. 

In  the  most  remarkable  parts  of  the  book  of  Exodus,  as  it 
stands,  Moses  has  no  true  proper  personal  agency  at  all.  He  has 
personal  agency,  indeed,  in  kiUing  the  Egyptian  taskmaster;  in 
fleeing  to  the  land  of  Midian,  and  becoming  a  herdsman  to  Jethro, 
and  marrying  Jethro's  daughter  Zipporah ;  and,  later,  in  his 
indignation  when  he  breaks  the  two  tables  of  stone,  deeming  the 
Israelites  unworthy  to  receive  God's  law ;  lastly,  also,  when  he 
pleads  with  God  on  behalf  of  the  sinful  people  (Exodus  xxxii.  11-13, 
and  31,  32).  But  the  deliverance  of  the  Israelites  from  Egypt, 
and  the  legislation  given  them,  are  in  no  respect  parts  of  his 
personal  agency.  He  receives  the  divine  commands,  he  lifts  up 
his  rod,  and  mighty  miracles  happen ;  but  he  is  not  the  doer  of 
these  miracles ;  he  has  not  even  by  any  labour  of  his  own  prepared 
the  way  for  them.  As  far  as  appears,  in  all  his  intercourse  with 
Pharaoh,  he  runs  no  personal  risk ;  he  moves  about  under  the 
divine  seal  and  protection,  and  sees  his  enemies  afflicted  and  falling, 
himself  being  the  while  perfectly  secure.  Why  should  we  specially 
honour  a  champion  who  has  so  easy  a  task  ?  Or  will  the  believer 
in  the  miracles  say  that  we  are  not  intended  to  honour  Moses, 
but  that  we  are  intended  to  honour  God  ?  True,  we  are  intended 
to  honour  God — remotely  and  mysteriously,  in  matters  that  are 
remote  and  mysterious  to  us ;  vividly  and  joyfully,  in  matters 
that  are  within  the  compass  of  our  intelligence.  Is  not  the  very 
meaning  of  a  revelation  this,  that  it  brings  within  the  compass  of 
our  intelligence  a  Power,  which  in  so  many  things  is  remote  and 
mysterious?  If  we  honour  God  for  performing  miracles  like 
those  of  the  Exodus,  we  honour  him  distantly  and  mysteriously ; 
if  we  honour  him  because  he  inspired  with  his  strength  the  native 
courage  and  patriotism  of  Moses,  we  honour  him  vividly  and 
intelligently.  Is  not  the  latter  entitled  to  be  called  a  revelation 
rather  than  the  former?  And  if  God's  agency  in  the  matter  lay 
in  his  inspiring  with  strength  the  native  courage  and  patriotism 
of  j\Ioses,  then  we  may  honour  Moses  too  ;  for  we  must  not  think 
that   God    infused   his   strength   into  Moses  mechanically.     The 


IX]  ABRAHAM    AND    MOSES  235 

case  was  quite  otherwise ;  it  was  heart  beating  with  heart ;  the 
heart  of  the  heroic  Moses  with  the  heart  of  the  Eternal  and 
Almighty  Spirit.  That  was  true,  intelligible  revelation;  not 
that  Moses  was  a  perfect  or  flawless  character;  but  he  was 
a  heroic  character,  worthy  of  God's  love  and  support.  He  did 
indeed  accomplish  a  far  greater  visible  work  than  Abraham  did ; 
though  Abraham  had  the  deeper  original  insight  and  feeling. 

On  these  premisses,  I  maintain  that  it  is  not  dispensing  with 
revelation  or  annulling  revelation  to  say  that  the  miracles  of  the 
Exodus  are  not  hterally  true ;  but  on  the  contrary,  that  such 
a  beginning  clears  the  way  for  understanding  what  revelation 
truly  is ;  and  without  such  a  clearing  of  the  way  we  cannot  proceed 
at  all.     To  the  actual  history  I  now  come. 

That  Moses  was  a  warrior  appears  even  from  the  Bible, 
though  in  the  Bible  this  part  of  his  action  is  thrown  into  the 
background  as  compared  with  his  office  as  the  spokesman  of  the 
divine  will,  the  declarer  of  the  divine  judgments.  But  in  the 
Antiquities  of  Josephus  (bookn.  c.  10)  and  in  the  treatise  Against 
Apion  of  the  same  author  (book  i.  c.  26)  the  military  aspect  of  the 
character  of  Moses  is  strongly  brought  forward ;  and  though  the 
latter  chapter  is  in  the  main  a  quotation  from  Manetho,  with 
whom  Josephus  is  by  no  means  in  agreement,  it  none  the  less 
shows  what  the  Egyptians  thought  of  Moses,  and  this  is  a  point 
of  view  not  to  be  neglected.  It  is  true  that,  even  in  Manetho, 
Moses  is  represented  as  primarily  a  lawgiver ;  but  very  curiously, 
he  is  represented  as  initiating  a  war  against  the  Egyptians  by 
summoning  to  the  help  of  the  Israelites  those  very  Shepherd  kings 
and  their  followers  whom  the  Egjrptians  had  driven  out.  Now, 
without  placing  implicit  faith  in  Manetho,  it  is  certainly  desirable 
V  that  in  considering  the  character  of  Moses  we  should  take  into 
account  the  military  aspects  of  it. 

The  great  work  of  which  he  was  the  true  author,  the  trans- 
planting of  the  Israehtes  from  Egypt  into  the  land  of  Canaan 
(a  work  not  completed  by  himself  but  none  the  less  truly  his), 
was  a  work  that  could  not  possibly  be  done  without  a  great  deal 
of  fighting  and  a  great  deal  of  killing.  Not  wholly  divine  was  such 
a  work ;  and  we  must  regret  this  part  of  it.  But  it  is  a  case  in 
which  we  have  to  balance  good  and  evil ;  and  that  which  makes 
the  balance  weigh  on  the  side  of  good  is  the  high  intrinsic  value 
of  the  people  of  Israel,  as  a  factor  in  the  world's  development. 
Moses  himself  could  but  feel,  he  could  not  fully  judge,  the 
way  in  which  the  balance  inclined;    but  we,   more  than  three 


236      THE  FIRST  SEED  OF  A  PERFECT  FAITH:      [ch. 

thousand  years  later  than  Moses,  have  surer  grounds  of  judg- 
ment. 

The  people  of  Israel,  depressed  as  they  had  been  through  long 
years  of  servitude  in  Egypt,  had  still,  especially  in  the  persons 
-  of  their  leaders,  much  of  that  high  sentiment  and  simplicity  of 
faith  which  had  come  down  to  them  from  Abraham.     In  many 
respects  they  were  barbarous ;    but  the  knowledge  and  skill  in 
(  which  they  were  inferior  to  Babylonians,  Egyptians,  and  even  to 
j  Canaanit«s,  had  less  value  for  the  world  than  that  forward-looking 
\  hope  which  was  the  treasure  of  their  hearts  and  their  bond  of 
j  union.     It  is  true  that  the  racial  tie  is  not  the  deepest  or  strongest 
of  ties ;  but  a  very  deep  and  strong  tie  it  is.     Fervently  did  Moses 
possess  it,  mounting  up  in  his  thoughts  to  the  founders  of  his 
race,  and  clinging  to  the  promises  of  God ;  and  if  we  cannot  think 
him  altogether  right  as  to  what  those  promises  were,  neither  must 
we  think  him  altogether  wrong.     The  most  earthly  and  least 
truly  divine  of  what  he  deemed  to  be  God's  promises,  the  inherit- 
ance by  Israel  of  the  land  of  Canaan,  was  to  Moses  the  rift  of  light 
which  showed  him  his  way  in  the  darkness ;  and  following  on  this 
track,  he  could  not  avoid  bloodshedding.     His  feelings  towards 
the  Canaanites,  against  whom  his  action  was  principally  directed, 
are  in  all  probability  more  correctly  represented  in  the  books  of 
Exodus  and  Numbers  than  in  the  book  of  Deuteronomy :  he  meant 
to  drive  them  out ;  but  he  had  no  wish  for  their  universal  slaughter. 
If  we  cannot  say  that  Moses  was  in  every  respect  a  merciful 
man,  he  was  at  all  events  full  of  pity  and  love  towards  his  own 
people,   the  Israelites.     Not  that  he   was  incapable  of  severity 
towards  them  too ;    that  was  implied  in  his  office  as  their  leader 
and  lawgiver ;   but  his  heart  was  bent  on  their  deliverance  and  on 
setting  them  right  in  the  way  of  peaceable  and  prosperous  life. 
Severe  as  he  was,  he  was  also  ardent,  vigorous,  loving  on  their 
behalf ;   the  diviner  side  of  Abraham's  ideal  had  taken  root  in  his 
temperament,  and  showed  itself  in  this  way^. 

But  what  was  the  exact  truth  as  regards  the  wonderful  event 
to  which  I  have  been  referring,  the  deliverance  of  the  Israelites 
from  Egypt,  their  acceptance  of  a  law  esteemed  by  them  as  divine, 
and  their  con([uest  of  Canaan?  Let  the  reader  remember  how 
difficuh    it   is  to  reconstruct  with  certainty  a  piece  of  ancient 

'  I  porccivc-  tliat  I  liavp,  without  design,  friven  a  fharacter  of  Moses  vt-ry  similar 
to  that  given  l)y  .Joscphns  in  liis  work  AijninM  Apion,  l)ook  ii.  cliaptcr.s  Id,  17.  In 
that  tn-atisc  ,Jose])luis  says  nothing  about  the  miracles  of  the  Exodus;  and  though  lie 
narrates  them  in  liis  Antiquities,  I  cannot  but  doubt  whether  he  really  t)elieved  in 
them. 


IX]  ABRAHAM    AND    MOSES  237 

history,  which  has  reached  us  almost  entirely  in  poetic  and  legendary 
form.  Yet  the  attempt  at  reconstruction  must  to  a  certain  extent 
be  made ;  for  the  history  is  in  this  part  of  vital  importance ;  and 
something,  though  not  everything,  may  be  determinable  respecting 
it.  Manetho,  though  he  has  considerable  defects,  may  yet  help 
us.  He  was  an  Egyptian,  and  the  Israehtes  were  disliked  and 
despised  by  him ;  but  there  are  points  in  his  account,  as  given  by 
Josephus,  which  deserve  our  attention.  Manetho  knows  that 
the  Shepherd  kings  were  a  powerful  dynasty  and  for  a  time 
conquerors  of  Egypt ;  he  might  even  seem  to  identify  them  and 
their  followers  with  the  Israelites ;  on  the  whole  however  it  would 
be  more  correct  to  say  that  he  looks  upon  the  Israelite  nation  as 
formed  by  a  union  between  the  followers  of  the  Shepherd  kings 
and  a  certain  portion  of  the  Egyptian  nation  that  had  been  cast 
out  as  afflicted  with  leprosy.  This  union,  according  to  him,  did 
not  take  place  while  the  Shepherd  kings  were  ruling  in  Egypt, 
but  some  three  or  four  centuries  after  they  had  been  expelled ; 
and  he  actually  says  that  the  Shepherd  kings  and  their  followers, 
on  leaving  Egypt,  went  and  founded  Jerusalem  and  built  the  temple 
there.  Three  or  four  centuries  after  this  (as  I  have  just  said)  he 
represents  Moses  as  being  born,  whose  original  name,  he  says,  was 
Osarsiph ;  and  the  toilsome  bondage  of  the  Israelites  appears  in 
Manetho's  narrative  as  the  bondage  of  some  eighty  thousand 
afflicted  Egyptians,  who  were  set  to  work  in  the  quarries  east  of 
the  Nile.  However  the  king  of  Egypt  (he  says)  of  his  own  grace 
and  favour  set  these  captives  free,  and  gave  them  a  desolate  city 
called  Avaris  to  live  in,  which  formerly  had  been  inhabited  by  the 
Shepherd  kings  and  their  followers.  These  eighty  thousand  then 
took  Osarsiph  (or  Moses)  for  their  leader,  who  gave  them  new 
laws,  very  diverse  from  those  of  the  Egyptians  (though  he  himself 
is  said  at  first  to  have  been  an  Egyptian  priest).  Moses  then 
summoned  the  followers  of  the  Shepherd  kings  from  Jerusalem, 
and  with  their  aid  tried  to  subdue  Egypt;  however  he  and  his 
alhes  were  defeated  and  driven  out,  and  retreated  to  Syria,  where 
(it  is  implied)  they  established  themselves  as  the  Israelite  nation. 

Manetho's  account  is  a  travesty  of  history ;  but  yet  he  knows 
something.  The  alliance  between  the  Shepherd  kings  and  the 
Israelites  is  known  by  him,  though  not  in  its  true  form.  The 
servitude  of  the  Israelites  is  known  by  him,  though  inaccurately 
as  to  its  length  and  character.  Though  he  attributes  to  many 
of  the  Israelites  an  Egyptian  origin,  he  knows  that  a  considerable 
part  of  the  nation  was  not  of  Egyptian  origin ;   and  this  part,  he 


238      THE   FIRST  SEED   OF   A  PERFECT  FAITH:      [ch. 

says,  came  from  the  east  (Against  Apion,  i.  14).  He  knows  that 
Moses  was  a  lawgiver,  and  a  lawgiver  of  remarkable  originality, 
and  that  he  took  the  lead  of  the  whole  nation  ;  and  if  he  represents 
him  as  originally  an  Egyptian,  we  must  remember  that  the  Bible 
also  represents  Moses  as  brought  up  among  the  Egyptians,  and 
as  trained  in  all  the  Egyptian  learning.  Finally,  is  not  Manetho 
right  when  he  represents  leprosy  as  common  among  the  Israelites  ? 
The  book  of  Leviticus  seems  to  support  him ;  and  it  was  a  frequent 
statement  among  heathen  authors. 

Now  comes  the  important  point.  Manetho  tells  us  that  the 
Israelites  (represented  by  him  as  a  composite  nation,  as  I  have 
described)  engaged  in  actual  fighting  with  the  Egyptians.  He 
does  not  say  that  they  won  their  liberty  by  fighting,  for  he  says 
that  the  Egyptians  gave  to  those  of  them  who  were  enslaved  their 
liberty  first,  and  that  the  Israelites  fought  afterwards  and  were 
beaten ;  but  surely  this  is  a  piece  of  patriotic  vanity  in  him. 
The  natural  inference  from  his  account  is  that  the  Israelites  had 
to  fight,  in  some  measure  at  any  rate,  in  order  to  obtain  their 
liberty.  And  is  not  this  the  most  natural  account  of  the  matter  ? 
If  the  Bible  does  not  say  so,  we  must  remember  that  the  Biblical 
historians  had  the  honour  of  Jehovah  deeply  at  heart,  and  that 
the  military  glory  of  their  own  nation  was  quite  secondary  in 
their  eyes.  It  was  natural  for  the  Biblical  historians  to  slide  off 
the  actual  fact  in  one  direction,  just  as  it  was  natural  for  Manetho 
to  slide  off  the  actual  fact  in  another  direction,  and  the  Bible  does 
represent  the  Egyptians  and  Israelites  as  very  nearly  coming  to 
blows. 

I  conclude,  then,  that  the  Israelites  won  their  liberty  not 
without  some  fighting,  and  that  Moses  was  their  leader  in  this. 
Had  they  any  allies?  The  book  of  Exodus  (xii.  38)  tells  us  that 
"a  mixed  multitude"  went  up  with  the  Israelites  out  of  Egypt. 
Who  were  this  mixed  multitude  ?  It  is  possible  that  they  were 
simply  ordinary  Egyptians  of  the  poorest  sort.  But  it  is  possible, 
also,  that  they  were  adherents  of  the  Shepherd  kings,  who  had 
been  left  belli nd  when  the  Shepherd  kings  were  expelled  from 
Egypt,  and  who  were  disliked  by  the  Egyptians  just  as  the  Israel- 
ites were  disliked  by  them.  If  so,  there  would  be  a  certain 
truth  in  the  statement  of  Manotlio  tliat  the  Israelites  formed 
an  alliance  with  the  Shepherds;  though  it  is  most  improbable 
that  tliey  sent  to  Jerusalem  to  obtain  that  alliance.  On  the  whole, 
looking  at  all  the  evidence,  it  seems  to  me  that  this  was  most 
probably  the  fact. 


IX]  ABRAHAM    AND    MOSES  239 

Probably  the  ten  plagues  are  a  tradition  founded  on  the  fact 
of  physical  calamities  from  which  Egypt  suffered  at  this  period: 
the  Israehtes  would  have  their  best  chance  of  escape  when  the 
Egyptians  were  in  any  way  weakened.  But  no  external  opportu- 
nities, taken  in  themselves,  can  account  for  the  dehverance  of 
the  Israelites ;  the  genius  of  Moses  was  the  true  main  cause  of  it. 
What  power  of  organisation  he  must  have  had !  This  he  would 
have  learned  when  in  the  service  of  the  Egyptians,  in  the  earlier 
years  of  his  Ufe ;  but  the  fountains  of  his  spirit  sprang  from  no 
such  external  source.  We  read  in  the  Bible  how,  when  in  full 
manhood,  he  openly  espoused  the  cause  of  his  oppressed  feUow- 
countrymen;  and  how,  having  slain  one  of  the  Egyptian  task- 
masters who  was  iU-treating  an  Israelite,  he  had  to  fly  into  exile. 
There  the  fire  kindled  in  his  heart ;  God  spoke  to  him ;  and  (a  new 
king  being  on  the  throne)  he  ventured  to  return  to  Egypt,  and  to 
claim  liberty  for  his  people.  The  persistent  refusal  of  Pharaoh 
did  but  make  his  ardour  keener ;  and  the  project  of  taking  posses- 
sion of  Canaan  would  be  confirmed  by  the  discovery  that  freedom 
for  the  Israelites  was  impossible  within  the  bounds  of  Egypt. 

How,  with  the  scanty  information  that  we  possess,  are  we  to 
reahse  the  stupendous  event  which  foUowed?  There  have  been 
many  instances  in  the  world's  history  of  great  hordes  travelling 
over  distances  far  longer  than  that  which  the  Israelites  traversed ; 
and  some  of  these  hordes  have  effected  conquests  at  the  end  of 
their  travel.  But  apart  from  all  the  material  difficulties  of  the 
case,  there  is  something  more  difficult  to  understand  about  the 
Israehtes  than  in  the  case  of  an  ordinary  barbarous  horde.  There 
certainly  was  a  light  shooting  through  the  darkness  of  their 
barbarism;  but  to  what  extent  who  shall  say?  There  was 
a  feeHng  in  them  that  they  were  a  chosen  race ;  but  how  many 
were  really  touched  by  this  feeUng  ?  To  how  many,  on  the  contrary, 
was  everything  hidden  except  the  present  danger  and  discomfort  ? 
How  far  were  the  vices  of  the  slave  still  in  them  ?  It  is  hard  to 
form  an  imagination  of  what  they  were ;  and  even  in  the  case  of 
Moses  himself,  the  mixture  of  mihtary  leader,  lawgiver,  and 
ethical  instructor  is  hard  to  realise. 

What  are  we  to  suppose  the  number  of  persons  thus  departing 
from  Egypt?  The  Biblical  reckoning  of  numbers  is  hardly  ever 
trustworthy ;  but  still,  in  order  to  account  for  the  conquest  of 
Canaan,  we  must  suppose  that  the  number  of  emigrants  is  to  be 
reckoned  by  the  hundred  thousand.  All  these,  while  still  in  the 
land  of  Egypt,  had  to  be  aroused,  stimulated,  set  in  motion ;   and 


240      THE   FIRST  SEED   OF  A   PERFECT   FAITH:      [ch. 

this,  until  the  actual  start,  had  to  be  done  with  secrecy.  This 
implies  a  certain  fellow-feeling  among  the  whole  multitude, 
whether  Israelites  or  not ;  but  when  they  had  once  started,  it 
would  take  no  long  time  for  them  all  to  consider  themselves 
Israehtes. 

A  warlike  movement,  as  I  have  said,  it  must  be  considered; 
and  on  a  night  when  the  bright  full  moon  was  shining,  the  blow 
was  struck.  It  is  not  improbable  that,  as  the  Bible  teUs  us,  the 
Israelites  smeared  their  doorposts  with  blood  on  that  night ;  for 
Egyptian  guards  and  Egyptian  soldiers  would  be  at  hand,  and  to 
attack  and  slay  these  would  be  the  first  step.  A  house  not  smeared 
with  blood  would  be  recognised  as  Egyptian.  It  is  possible  even, 
as  Manetho  affirms  (Josephus,  Against  Apion,  i.  26)  that  towns 
and  villages  were  set  on  fire.  But  in  any  case  the  servitude  was 
loosened ;  the  march  of  liberation  began.  If  the  Pharaoh  of  that 
time  was  absent  in  Ethiopia  (as  we  gather  from  Manetho)  the 
pursuit  would  be  delayed ;  and  when  it  did  take  place,  it  was 
too  late  for  any  effective  recovery  of  the  fugitives.  The  "sea  of 
reeds,"  towards  which  Moses  directed  the  march,  was  not,  as  is 
now  generally  acknowledged,  the  Red  Sea,  but  the  marshy  lakes 
to  the  north.  As  to  what  took  place  there,  it  is  impossible  now  to 
speak  with  certainty.  It  is  by  no  means  unlikely  that  some  of 
the  retreating  Israelites  were  overtaken  and  slain  by  the  army  of 
Pharaoh  in  revenge ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  also  possible  that 
the  Egyptians  were  entangled  in  the  marshes  and  suffered  serious 
loss  there.  However  this  may  be,  the  Israelites  and  their  allies 
(thenceforward  regarded  as  part  of  the  entire  Israelite  body) 
escaped,  in  the  reign  of  the  Pharaoh  Menephthah,  called  by 
Manetho  Amenophis,  in  the  fourteenth^  century  before  the 
Christian  era.  Egypt  was  behind  them ;  the  desert  country  was 
before  them.     What  happened  in  that  desert  country? 

We  must  believe  that  there  the  foundation  was  laid  on  which  the 
spiritual  government  of  a  nation  was  afterwards  reared,  though 
not  for  centuries  afterwards  was  that  spiritual  government  com- 
pleted in  all  its  details.  But  before  coming  to  that  great  subject, 
some  preliminary  points  must  be  spoken  of. 

The  Bible,  as  everyone  knows,  speaks  of  forty  years  as  the 
time  during  which  the  Israelites  sojourned  in  the  wilderness. 
But  the  word  "forty"  is  often  used  in  the  Bible  to  signity  a  term 
of  indelinite  length  :    and  when  we  look  into  the  details  of  the 

'  Or  porhapH  the  thirteenth  century;  but  the  precise  date  must  not  be  (Jis(^usaed 
liere. 


IX}  ABRAHAM    AND    MOSES  241 

book  of  Numbers,  we  see  that  only  three  actual  years  of  wanderings 
are  narrated.  The  first  year  begins,  of  course,  with  the  departure 
from  Egypt ;  the  second  year  begins  with  the  passover  described 
at  the  beginning  of  the  ninth  chapter  of  Numbers ;  the  third  year 
begins  with  the  arrival  of  the  Israehtes  at  Kadesh  (Numbers  xx.  1). 
It  is  true  that  the  third  year  is  not  expUcitly  mentioned  in  this 
last  passage,  but  only  the  "first  month";  but  a  comparison  of 
Numbers  xx.  1  with  Deuteronomy  ii.  14  proves  (even  if  it  were 
otherwise  doubtful)  that  the  third  year  is  meant.  Now  this  same 
twentieth  chapter  of  Numbers  carries  us  at  once  to  the  last  year 
of  the  desert  wanderings,  in  the  twenty-third  verse  (for  Aaron's 
death,  which  is  there  mentioned,  happened  in  the  fifth  month  of 
the  fortieth  year  after  the  Exodus,  according  to  Numbers  xxxiii. 
38).  Now  what  was  happening  during  the  years,  more  than 
thirty-seven  in  number,  which  elapsed  between  the  arrival  of  the 
Israehtes  at  Kadesh  and  the  death  of  Aaron  ?  Our  two  authori- 
ties. Numbers  and  Deuteronomy,  differ  here  very  considerably ;  but 
neither  authority  fills  up  the  gap  in  any  adequate  manner.  The 
only  important  event  which  the  book  of  Numbers  mentions  is  a 
miracle,  which  on  a  particular  occasion  supphed  the  Israelites  with 
water ;  but  how  the  Israehtes  were  supplied  with  water  during  the 
rest  of  the  thirty-seven  years,  the  book  of  Numbers  does  not  say. 

Now  though,  if  we  accepted  the  miraculous  history  as  it  stands, 
we  should  no  doubt  accept  the  forty  years  sojourn  in  the  wilderness 
along  with  the  other  marvels  without  question;  yet,  if  we  do 
not  accept  the  miraculous  history  (and  I  am  maintaining  that 
we  cannot),  the  case  is  altered;  the  "forty  years"  cannot  be 
maintained  as  of  any  authority ;  it  simply  shows  that  the  Israelites 
felt  that  they  had  remained  a  very  long  time  in  the  desert.  But 
in  a  nation  imbued  with  this  feeling,  three  years  may  well  be 
expanded  into  an  indefinite  large  number ;  and  then  the  didactic 
teachers  of  an  after  generation  would  fix  this  large  number  as 
forty,  and  would  draw  the  moral  which  we  see  that  they  drew, 
of  the  penalty  inflicted  on  those  who  transgressed  the  commands 
of  Jehovah. 

If  we  suppose  the  desert  wanderings  to  have  occupied  a  period 
of  three  years,  we  shall  be  within  the  bounds  of  natural  possibility, 
aU  things  being  considered.  It  is  probable  that  the  deserts 
surrounding  Palestine  were  not  quite  so  barren  in  the  days  of 
Moses  as  they  are  at  the  present  day.  This  is  a  point  to  which 
attention  was  called  by  Dean  Stanley,  in  his  Sinai  and  Palestine ; 
who  remarks  that  even  of  late  years  the  vegetation  has  diminished, 

M.  D.  A.  16 


242      THE  FIRST  SEED  OF  A  PERFECT  FAITH:      [ch. 

through  the  destructive  habits  of  the  wild  population.  It  is 
certain  that  the  land  of  Edom,  which  borders  on  the  Sinaitic 
peninsula,  could  not  maintain  to-day  the  population  which  it 
maintained  in  ancient  times ;  and  would  such  an  invasion  of 
Palestine  be  possible  at  the  present  day  as  that  described  in  the 
following  passage  of  the  book  of  Judges? 

And  the  hand  of  Midian  prevailed  against  Isreiel ;  and  because  of  Midian 
the  children  of  Israel  meide  them  the  dens  which  are  in  the  mountains,  and 
the  caves,  and  the  strongholds.  And  so  it  was,  when  Israel  had  sown, 
that  the  Midianites  came  up,  and  the  Amalekites,  and  the  children  of  the 
eaat ;  they  came  up  against  them ;  and  they  encamped  against  them,  and 
destroyed  the  increase  of  the  earth,  till  thou  come  to  Gaza,  and  left  no 
sustenance  in  Israel,  neither  sheep,  nor  ox,  nor  ass.  For  they  came  up 
with  their  cattle  and  their  tents,  they  came  in  as  locusts  for  multitude; 
both  they  and  their  camels  were  without  number,  and  they  came  into  the 
land  to  destroy  it.  And  Israel  was  brought  very  low  because  of  Midian ; 
and  the  children  of  Israel  cried  tinto  Jehovah,     Judges  vi.  2-6. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  writer  of  that  passage  had 
seen  the  event  which  he  so  graphically  describes ;  but  plainly  it 
was  not  an  impossible  event  in  those  days.  The  wild  "children 
of  the  east"  must  have  come  across  the  desert  to  Palestine; 
and  does  not  this  go  far  to  show  that  the  Israelites,  coming  from 
the  south,  may  have  done  the  same?  We  cannot  solve  all 
difficulties ;  but  the  sojourn  of  the  Israelites  for  three  years  in 
the  desert  country  cannot  be  held  to  be  an  impossibility,  quite 
apart  from  miracle.  The  cattle  which  they  took  with  them 
would  supply  them  with  some  means  of  subsistence ;  and  it  is 
important  to  notice  that  cattle  can  live  in  a  country  where  men 
could  not  find  any  sustenance  in  the  produce  of  the  ground. 

But  in  all  this  history  of  the  desert  wanderings,  as  in  the  history 
of  the  Exodus  itself,  the  central  part  is  that  of  Moses ;  and  Moses, 
strong  as  a  leader,  is  yet  more  admirable  as  a  lawgiver.  It  is 
not  to  be  supposed  that  any  part  of  the  elaborate  Pentateuchal 
code  proceeded  from  Moses,  or  from  any  one  at  all  near  to  the 
date  of  Moses,  except  what  are  called  the  ten  commandments 
(in  the  Hebrew  the  "ten  words");  and  these  would  be  written 
in  the  briefest,  probably  hieroglyphic,  form.  The  evidence  seems 
sufliciont  that  the  ark  which  was  in  Solomon's  temple  really 
contained  the  tables  of  stone  on  which  the  "ten  words"  were 
written  (see  Deuteronomy  x.  5,  written,  it  must  be  remembered, 
about  the  reign  of  Josiah) ;  and  the  history  of  the  ark  is 
very  fairly  traced  back  to  the  time  of  the  judges  (cf.  1  Samuel 
iii.  3).     Earlier  than  that,  tradition  must  answer  for  the  tables  of 


IX]  ABRAHAM    AND    MOSES  243 

stone ;  but  the  tradition  is  a  probable  one.  I  assume  then  that 
the  substance  of  the  ten  commandments  came  from  Moses;  and 
any  one  who  beheves  in  God  must  confess  that  their  purport  is 
of  admirable  breadth  and  sanity,  and  especially  suited  to  a  primi- 
tive race.  To  us,  perhaps,  they  would  appear  maxims  of  morality 
rather  than  laws  in  the  strict  sense  (though  "Thou  shalt  not 
kill!'  and  "Thou  shalt  not  steal"  are  still  cardinal  points  of 
legislation) ;  but  if  we  say  this,  we  must  also  say  that  morality 
reaches  deeper  than  the  forms  of  law  can  reach.  The  command- 
ments were  meant  to  penetrate  to  the  soul,  even  more  than  to 
direct  the  actions  of  men;  and  that  they  performed  this  office 
for  the  choice  spirits  of  the  race  of  Israel  cannot  be  doubted. 

It  cannot  of  course  be  supposed  that  the  whole  people  of 
Israel,  either  at  the  time  of  the  desert  wanderings  or  for  many 
centuries  afterwards,  received  the  ten  commandments  in  that 
manner  of  full  acceptance  which  was  designed  by  Moses;  they 
were  an  influence  which  worked  gradually;  and,  under  all  the 
circumstances,  this  could  not  have  been  otherwise.  But  those 
Israelites  who  really  embraced  the  commandments  as  a  divine 
law  were  truly  elevated  by  them,  and  did  not  forget  them ;  and 
while  it  must  be  confessed  that  something  more  powerful  was 
needed  thoroughly  to  purify  human  nature  from  all  evil  propen- 
sities, the  commandments  did  act  powerfully  in  that  direction. 
No  doubt  the  commandment  as  to  keeping  the  sabbath  day  is 
more  valuable  in  its  spirit  than  in  its  letter. 

We  must  not  be  surprised  if  Moses  sought  to  enforce  some  of 
these  commandments,  and  especially  that  against  idolatry,  with 
too  great  an  exercise  of  material  force ;  if  it  be  true  that  he  slew 
many  of  the  idolaters  in  the  matter  of  the  golden  calf,  we  certainly 
should  say  so.  These  idolaters,  it  must  be  remembered,  were 
intending  to  worship  Jehovah  (Exodus  xxxii.  5).  But  in  a  rough 
age  rough  things  are  done,  even  by  the  best  men ;  and  the  com- 
mandments are  a  proof  that  the  higher  ideal  of  Abraham,  if  not 
embraced  by  Moses  in  that  lofty  universality  with  which  Abraham 
embraced  it,  had  still  a  true  abode  in  the  heart  of  Moses.  It  was 
Moses  who  made  the  ideals  of  Abraham  a  great  practical  force  in 
the  world ;  he  narrowed  them  somewhat  in  doing  so,  but  his 
service  to  mankind  was  nevertheless  of  the  highest  kind. 

What  are  we  to  say  of  the  Israelites — the  people  whom  Moses 
led?  Scarcely  as  yet  a  nation,  they  were  being  formed  into  a 
nation.  The  current  of  a  common  feeling  did  run  through  them, 
even  at  the  time  of  the  Exodus ;   and  it  was  plainly  strengthened 

16—2 


244    THE  FIRST  SEED  OF  A  PERFECT  FAITH    [ch.  ix 

by  the  time  they  made  their  onslaught  on  Canaan.  We  must  be 
content  with  partial  virtue  in  such  a  people,  provided  it  be 
a  growing  virtue.  That  they  were  sometimes  cowardly  we  may 
beheve ;  their  refusal  to  obey  Moses,  when  he  first  ordered  the 
invasion  of  Canaan  after  the  mission  of  the  spies,  is  an  instance. 
But  on  the  whole  we  shall  not  think  them  cowardly ;  nay  rather 
we  shall  honour  them  for  their  courage ;  and  if  they  felt  no 
compunction  or  qualm  in  slajdng  men  of  ahen  race  who  stood  in 
their  way,  we  must  remember  how  long  it  was  before  even  Christian 
nations  learned  to  exercise  mercy  towards  men  of  wholly  alien 
race  and  different  belief  from  themselves. 

Let  me  finally  quote  from  the  Bible  a  well-known  passage  in 
commendation  of  the  Israelites,  such  as  the  Bible  itself  seldom 
gives  them :  it  is  part  of  the  prophecy  attributed  to  the  great 
heathen  seer,  Balaam  (Numbers  xxiii.): 

From  Aram  hath  Balak  brought  me, 

The  king  of  Moab  from  the  mountains  of  the  Efist: 

Come,  curse  me  Jacob, 

And  come,  defy  Israel. 

How  shall  I  curse,  whom  God  hath  not  cursed? 

And  how  shall  I  defy,  whom  Jehovah  hath  not  defied  ? 

For  from  the  top  of  the  rocks  I  see  him, 

And  from  the  hills  I  behold  him : 

Lo,  it  is  a  people  that  dwell  alone. 

And  shall  not  be  reckoned  among  the  nations. 

Who  can  count  the  dust  of  Jacob, 

Or  number  the  fourth  part  of  Israel? 

Let  me  die  the  death  of  the  righteous. 

And  let  my  last  end  be  hke  his ! 

Rise  up,  Balak,  and  hear ; 

Hearken  unto  me,  thou  son  of  Zippor ! 

God  is  not  a  man,  that  he  should  lie ; 

Neither  the  son  of  man,  that  he  should  repent: 

Hath  he  said,  and  shall  he  not  do  it? 

Or  hath  he  spoken,  and  shall  he  not  make  it  good  ? 

Behold,  I  hav(^  received  commandment  to  bless: 

And  he  hath  blessed,  and  I  cannot  reverse  it. 

He  hath  not  behold  iniquity  in  Jacob, 

Neither  hath  ho  seen  perverseness  in  Israel : 

Jehovah  his  God  is  with  him. 

And  the  shout  of  a  king  is  among  them. 

The  great  patriot  and  lawgiver,  with  whom  the  latter  part  of 
the  present  chapter  has  been  concerned,  died  just  before  the 
Israelites  actually  entered  Canaan ;  his  faithful  brother  Aaron, 
and  his  no  less  faithful  sister  Miriam,  having  died  before  him. 


APPENDIX   TO  CHAPTER  IX 

THE   NAME   "  JEHOVAH  " 

The  Hebrew  word,  the  pronunciation  of  which  is  now  thought 
to  be  represented  to  us  modern  Europeans  by  "Yahweh,"  was 
formerly  written  "Jehovah."  In  our  ordinary  translations, 
both  Authorised  and  Revised,  "Jehovah"  is  sometimes  found; 
but  generally  it  is  replaced  by  the  phrase  "the  Lord"  (which 
corresponds  to  the  Greek  of  the  Septuagint  version  and  the  Latin 
of  the  Vulgate) ;  the  capital  letters  indicating  that  it  is  not  a  trans- 
lation of  the  Hebrew  "  Adonai,"  which  in  our  versions  is  translated 
by  "the  Lord,"  in  the  ordinary  small  letters.  No  doubt  the 
design  of  all  the  translators  just  mentioned  (Greek,  Latin,  or 
EngHsh)  was  to  take  away  from  the  minds  of  their  readers  any 
idea  that  the  God  mentioned  was  only  the  God  of  the  Jews.  But 
as  that  idea  really  is  present  in  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  (the 
most  remarkable  passage  of  this  nature  is  Judges  xi.  24),  it  is  not 
proper,  in  a  work  like  the  present  at  any  rate,  to  use  artificial 
means  for  the  purpose  of  preventing  it  from  being  recognised. 

It  would  seem  then  to  follow,  if  we  wish  to  be  accurate,  that 
this  Hebrew  word  should  be  translated  by  "Yahweh."  But 
I  have  not  done  so,  and  for  this  reason.  Ordinary  people  who  read 
about  "Yahweh"  have  an  obscure  feeling  of  puzzlement,  and 
hardly  feel  that  the  name  implies  any  sacredness.  Now  I  am 
most  unwilling  that  any  one  should  think  that  the  God  of  the  Old 
Testament  is  not  sacred  to  us.  Though  it  is  true  that  the  ideas 
of  the  race  of  Israel  respecting  God  sometimes  fell  low,  they  some- 
times rose  very  high  ;  and  I  cannot  think  that  we  ought  to  disjoin 
ourselves  from  them.  The  name  "Jehovah"  does  imply  to 
ordinary  people  some  sacredness ;    and  therefore  I  have  used  it. 

Finally,  in  respect  of  one  particular  phrase,  I  hope  I  may  be 
excused  for  having  sometimes  written  "Jehovah  Sabaoth, "  re- 
presenting the  Hebrew  words,  sometimes  as  in  the  ordinary 
translations,  "The  Lord  of  hosts." 


CHAPTER  X 
Israel's  earthly  ideal  attained:  david 

I  MUST  not  allow  my  reader  for  a  moment  to  forget  the  double 
process  of  thought  and  feeling  of  which  I  am  tracing  the  develop- 
ment in  the  race  of  Israel ;  one  branch  of  it  lying  in  the  background, 
hardly  beginning  to  send  out  its  tender  shoots,  the  ideal  conceived 
by  Abraham  of  a  blessing  about  to  accrue  to  all  mankind  through 
his  progeny ;  the  other  branch,  also  germinating  in  the  thoughts 
of  that  same  Abraham,  the  plain  intelligible  purpose,  divinely 
permitted  rather  than  divinely  enjoined,  that  his  posterity  should 
inherit  the  land  of  Canaan. 

This  intelligible  purpose,  this  ideal  suited  to  the  superficial 
strata  of  the  human  heart  rather  than  to  man's  diviner  instincts, 
had  been  seized  with  vigour  by  Moses ;  and  though  the  diviner 
morality  had  also  touched  Moses,  yet  when  he  died,  it  was  the 
earthly  ideal  which  stood  out  preeminently  as  the  goal  of  the 
Israelites.  Already,  even  while  outside  the  boundaries  of  Canaan, 
had  the  Israelites  under  Moses  vanquished  two  Amorite  kings, 
slain  or  driven  out  their  people,  and  occupied  their  territory. 
Now,  under  Joshua,  they  were  about  to  enter  Canaan  itself;  and 
for  a  very  long  time  the  militant  purpose,  the  conquering  histinct, 
was  supreme  among  them.  The  feeling  of  brotherhood  between 
Israelite  and  Israelite  existed  however,  and  was  a  softening  agency, 
though  often  disturbed  by  local  quarrels ;  and  a  sublime  sense 
of  the  being  and  working  of  Jehovah,  as  the  one  Supreme  Deity, 
animated  the  noblest  spirits  of  the  nation.  These  ardent  souls 
felt  that  Jehovah  had  been  their  deliverer,  and  therefore  refused 
all  recognition,  even  the  smallest,  to  other  deities,  or  even  to  the 
names  of  other  deities ;  but  it  was  long  before  this  conviction 
penetrated  the  mass  of  the  Israelites. 

It  is  the  era  of  Israelite  conquest,  however,  on  which  I  am  now 
entering.  Under  Joshua  the  victorious  race  occupied  many  parts 
of  Canaan.     Yet  the  Israelites  no  more  effected  the  conquest  of 


CH.  X]  DAVID  247 

Canaan  with  a  single  blow  than  the  Saxons,  eighteen  centuries 
afterwards,  occupied  Britain  after  a  single  campaign.  We  see 
clearly  from  various  passages  in  the  book  of  Joshua  (xiii.  13, 
XV.  63,  xvi.  10,  xvii.  12  ,13),  and  still  more  from  the  first  chapter 
of  Judges,  that  for  a  long  time  Israelites  and  Canaanites  Uved  side 
by  side  over  the  greater  part  of  Canaan;  and  there  was  some 
mingling  of  the  races.  Sometimes  the  Israelites  enslaved  the 
Canaanites ;  occasionally  the  Canaanite  chiefs  conquered  and 
enslaved  the  IsraeHtes  in  their  neighbourhood.  Temporary 
incursions  and  victories  there  were  too  on  the  part  of  more  distant 
nations ;  now  it  was  Moabites  or  Ammonites,  now  again  the 
Midianites,  but  at  last  mainly  the  PhiHstines,  who  obtained  pre- 
dominance in  this  way.  The  Israelites  were  by  no  means  always 
the  masters  of  the  territory  which  they  had  won. 

Still,  the  intrinsic  cohesion  of  the  tribes  of  Israel  made  itself 
felt  more  and  more,  and  proved  superior  to  aU  the  material  weapons 
of  their  rivals.  At  this  time,  we  cannot  doubt,  began  the  celebra- 
tion in  song  and  story  of  the  deliverance  of  Israel  from  Egypt, 
and  of  the  "Wars  of  Jehovah,"  which  expanded  at  last  into  those 
famous  narratives  which  we  now  read  in  the  books  of  Exodus  and 
Numbers ;  and  the  more  ancient  heroes,  Abraham  and  Isaac, 
Jacob  and  Joseph,  would  not  be  forgotten  in  such  recitals.  Israel 
felt  the  pride  of  national  prowess ;  and  even  superior  to  this  pride 
would  be  the  awe  felt  at  the  power  of  Jehovah,  who  had  worked 
such  great  things  on  their  behalf.  Not  wholly  pure  was  the 
religious  sentiment  in  Israel ;  yet  it  was  purer,  and  more  justly 
founded,  than  any  similar  feeling  in  any  other  nation  then 
existing. 

But  it  was  precisely  in  respect  of  the  religion  that  a  serious 
problem  now  arose,  disordering  to  the  welfare  of  the  nation  during 
many  centuries,  and  leaving  its  mark  even  when  the  final  settle- 
ment had  been  reached,  and  when  the  problem  as  a  problem  had 
disappeared.  The  Canaanites,  where  not  extirpated,  were  slowly 
being  absorbed  into  the  Israelite  nation ;  and  yet,  in  the  process 
of  being  absorbed,  they  exercised  an  influence  on  the  Israelites. 
This  was  likely  to  be  true  especially  of  the  Hittites,  now  known 
to  have  been  a  race  of  commanding  power;  but  indeed  the 
Canaanites  generally  are  likely  to  have  possessed  a  more  advanced 
civilisation  than  that  to  which  the  Israelites  had  attained.  Hence 
the  surviving  Canaanites  influenced  the  Israelites,  and  quite  as 
much  in  religion  as  in  other  things;  the  local  shrines  did  not  at 
once  lose  the  authority  with  which  they  had  been  accredited  of 


248         ISRAEL'S    EARTHLY    IDEAL    ATTAINED:        [oh. 

old,  and  the  Israelites  frequently  worshipped  at  them.  It  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that  the  Supreme  Being  had  always  been  wor- 
shipped by  the  truest  Israelites  under  such  names  as  Elohim, 
Adonai,  El  Shaddai,  as  well  as  under  the  commanding  name  of 
Jehovah ;  and  there  appeared  little  objection,  superficially 
speaking,  to  the  name  of  Baal  being  added  to  these  appellations. 
We  have,  however,  to  consider  in  such  cases  not  merely  the  bare 
name  taken  in  itself,  but  the  associations  with  which  long  use  has 
imbued  the  name.  Such  names  as  Elohim  and  Adonai  recalled, 
quite  as  much  as  Jehovah,  those  pleadings  of  man  with  God,  and 
that  help  given  by  Grod  to  man,  of  which  Israelite  history  is 
full ;  and  though  the  manner  of  that  divine  help  was  becoming 
transformed  and  materialised  in  the  traditional  narratives,  the 
remembrance  of  it  even  under  this  transformation  was  a  possession 
of  great  value.  The  name  Baal  had  associations  of  far  vaguer 
and  less  worthy  character,  and  it  was  difficult  to  abolish  these  if 
the  name  was  to  be  accepted.  Our  means  of  judgment  at  the 
present  day  cannot  but  be  imperfect  as  to  what  was  possible  in 
the  use  of  terms  so  ancient.  We  have  reason  (to  which  I  will 
shortly  advert)  for  saying  that  many  Israelites  worshipped  God 
under  the  name  of  Baal  without  any  polytheistic  idea  being 
involved  in  such  worship,  or  any  desertion  of  the  worship  of 
Jehovah  ;  and  yet  it  is  probable  that  the  rejection  of  the  name  by 
the  higher  spirits  of  the  Israelite  race  was  a  right  rejection.  The 
quarrel  on  this  point  was  long  continued  and  was  sometimes  of 
great  bitterness,  especially  in  northern  Israel,  where  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Tyre  and  Sidon  gave  greater  strength  to  the  worship  of 
Baal ;  and  though  I  have  said  that  the  name  of  Baal  was  sometimes 
used  as  practically  having  the  same  meaning  as  Jehovah,  yet  the 
use  of  it  as  meaning  a  rival  deity  to  Jehovah  was  probably  more 
frequent. 

Both  from  their  assimilation  to  the  aboriginal  Canaanites  and 
from  their  own  crude  and  primitive  character,  the  Israelites  were 
prone  to  another  practice  censured  by  Moses,  idolatry.  Though 
the  central  shrine  at  Shiloh,  where  the  tabernacle  and  ark  were, 
had  no  idol,  yet  there  are  passages  in  the  book  of  Judges  (viii.  27 
and  xvii.  1-5)  which  show  that  Jehovah  was  sometimes  represented 
under  the  form  of  an  idol,  in  spite  of  the  Mosaic  prohibition. 
Human  sacrifices  again  were  not  unknown;  and  though  the 
106th  psalm,  written  in  later  and  purer  days,  says  that  these 
were  offered  "unto  the  idols  of  Canaan,"  the  worship  of  Jehovah 
was  not  altogether  free  from  them  either.     A  recognition  of  human 


X]  DAVID  249 

sacrifice  to  Jehovah,  as  a  lawful  act,  has  crept  into  the  book  of 
Leviticus  (xxvii.  28,  29) : 

Notwithstanding,  no  devoted  thing,  that  a  man  shall  devote  unto 
Jehovah  of  all  that  he  hath,  whether  of  man  or  beast,  or  of  the  field  of  his 
possession,  shall  be  sold  or  redeemed:  every  devoted  thing  is  most  holy 
unto  Jehovah.  None  devoted^,  which  shall  be  devoted  of  men,  shall  be 
ransomed;   he  shall  surely  be  put  to  death. 

This  general  precept  finds  an  illustration  in  the  sacrifice  of 
his  daughter  by  Jephthah ;  but  that  poor  innocent  victim  was 
honoured  with  such  special  memorials  after  her  death  (Judges 
xi.  39,  40)  that  we  must  suppose  the  case  to  have  been  a  rare  one. 

The  Israehtes  in  the  time  of  the  judges  deserve  owe  esteem, 
despite  their  frailties,  even  as  in  their  desert  wanderings ;  they 
had  warm  hearts  and  a  courageous  spirit ;  and  if  we  must  some- 
times reproach  them  for  cruelty,  we  must  remember  in  how  little 
account  human  life  was  held  all  over  the  world  in  that  day.  The 
later  moralists  of  Israel  reproached  them  for  their  too  great 
clemency  to  the  conquered  Canaanites ;  a  reproach  in  which  we 
certainly  cannot  join. 

It  is  not  my  object  to  dwell  on  the  details  of  the  history  of 
Israel;  and  the  picturesque  narratives,  half  history  and  half 
poetry,  which  are  associated  with  the  names  of  Deborah,  Gideon, 
Jephthah,  and  Samson,  must  not  detain  me  here.  But  the  strange 
and  painful  history  of  the  sin,  punishment,  and  restoration  of  the 
tribe  of  Benjamin,  which  occupies  the  last  three  chapters  of  the 
book  of  Judges,  is  worth  noting  as  an  example  both  of  wild  justice 
and  of  those  reactions  of  pity  to  which  the  Israelites  after  a  deed 
of  ultra-severity  were  prone.  It  is  permissible  to  believe  that  the 
bloodshed  recorded  in  those  chapters  has  been  exaggerated,  as  is 
often  the  case  in  the  Biblical  pages. 

From  the  southern  desert  up  to  the  range  of  Lebanon  in  the 
north,  Israel  at  last  stood  out  as  the  people  that  held  command, 
except  as  to  the  south-western  angle  of  this  territory,  where  the 
Philistines  still  remained  as  antagonists  not  wholly  unequal  in 
force.  The  Philistines  were  the  more  dexterous,  and  the  better 
craftsmen ;  for  we  read  that  the  Israelites  had  to  have  recourse 
to  the  Philistines  to  put  an  edge  on  their  tools,  and  the  weapons 
of  the  Israelites  were  of  the  rudest  kind ;  swords  and  spears  were 
rare  among  them  (1  Samuel  xiii.  19-22).     The  reason  of  this  was 

^  Though  the  Hebrew  word  here  translated  "devoted"  generally  means  "devoted 
because  accursed,"  this  is  not  always  the  case  (see  Micah  iv.  13) ;  and  the  context  in 
the  present  passage  does  not  imply  a  curse  at  all. 


260         ISRAEL'S    EARTHLY    IDEAL   ATTAINED         [ch. 

partly  the  natural  backwardness  of  the  Israelites,  and  the  suspicion 
in  which  they  were  held  by  their  neighbours;  but  partly  also, 
because  living  as  they  did  on  the  hills,  their  communications  with 
the  countries  round  them  were  not  easy ;  whereas  the  Philistines 
from  their  plains  near  the  seacoast  had  easy  intercourse  with  all 
the  world.  But  the  Israelites  were  the  more  numerous  people, 
and  inhabited  a  country  more  difficult  to  attack ;  and  they  at 
last  determined  on  a  step  which  had  for  its  direct  object  the 
increase  of  their  military  force.  They  asked  their  great  prophet 
and  judge,  Samuel,  to  choose  for  them  a  king,  who  should  lead 
them  in  battle. 

If  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  had  lain  before  Samuel,  he  would 
have  seen  that  this  request  was  a  perfectly  legitimate  one,  and 
that  directions  had  been  laid  down  in  that  book  as  to  the  appoint- 
ment of  a  king  over  the  Israelites.  (Deuteronomy  xvii.  14-20.) 
But  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  (as  was  shown  in  the  preceding 
chapter  of  this  work)  was  not  yet  written,  and  was  not  to  be 
written  until  long  after  Samuel's  date ;  and  Samuel,  both  for 
selfish  and  for  unselfish  reasons,  disapproved  of  the  request  which 
was  urged  upon  him.  It  involved  a  restraint  on  his  own  authority ; 
and  it  brought  in  a  possibility  that  the  worship  of  Jehovah 
might  no  longer  be  the  centre  of  action  and  feeling  in  Israel.  We 
must  do  Samuel  the  justice  of  saying  that  a  regard  for  other 
sides  of  human  nature  besides  the  success  of  the  warrior  was 
probably  the  chief  cause  of  his  reluctance  to  comply  with  the 
request  of  the  Israelites.  However,  he  was  not  strong  enough 
to  resist  them ;  and  after  taking  all  the  measures  in  his  power 
to  prevent  the  worship  of  Jehovah  suffering,  he  chose  or  accepted 
as  king,  and  anointed  with  the  oil  of  ceremonial  sacredness,  Saul 
the  son  of  Kish,  of  the  tribe  of  Benjamin.  The  Biblical  narrative 
which  tells  us  how  Saul  was  in  search  of  his  father's  asses  when 
Samuel  met  him  and  invited  him  to  a  sacrificial  feast,  and  anointed 
him  to  be  king,  can  hardly  be  the  full  truth  on  such  a  matter. 
Some  previous  discussion  there  must  have  been  between  Samuel 
and  the  Israelite  chiefs ;  and  the  question  occurs.  Why  was  the 
new  king  chosen  from  the  very  smallest  of  the  tribes  of  Israel? 
The  answer  probably  is,  that  Samuel  had  some  distrust  of  the 
tribe  of  Ephraim,  then  in  chief  power;  while  yet  he  could  not 
venture  to  select  the  new  king  from  the  tribe  of  Judah,  which 
was  powerful  enough  to  excite  the  jealousy  of  Ephraim ;  but  the 
tribe  of  Benjamin,  which  lay  between  the  two,  was  so  weak  as  to 
excite  no  jealousy ;    and  Samuel  probably  thought  that  a  king 


X]  DAVID  251 

selected  from  so  weak  a  tribe  would  be  amenable  to  his  advice. 
If  this  was  his  motive,  it  proved  a  mistake. 

The  ensuing  situation  was  most  delicate,  and  in  the  sequel 
proved  disastrous.  For  the  first  time  in  the  records  of  history, 
we  find  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  that  quarrel  which  has  had 
so  many  counterparts  afterwards,  the  quarrel  between  Church 
and  State.  The  quarrel  in  this  instance  was  only  too  natural ; 
but  the  particular  causes  which  the  Bible  assigns  for  it  are  wholly 
inadequate,  and  it  is  clear  that  something  not  recorded  lies  behind 
them.  What  that  something  was  we  cannot  certainly  know,  but 
we  may  with  some  fikeUhood  conjecture. 

From  the  first  book  of  Chronicles  (viii.  33,  34  and  ix.  39,  40) 
we  learn  that  Saul  had  a  son  named  Eshbaal,  and  a  grandson  named 
Merib-baal.  Now  these  two  persons  are  the  same  as  those  who 
are  named,  in  the  second  book  of  Samuel,  Ishbosheth  and  Mephi- 
bosheth ;  and  it  may  be  asked  how  it  happens  that  we  find  this 
variation  in  the  names  of  weU-known  persons.  The  answer  is 
easy;  the  name  Ishbosheth  means  "the  man  of  shame,"  and  was 
not  a  possible  name  for  Saul  to  give  to  his  son ;  but  the  name 
Eshbaal,  "the  man  of  Baal"  as  we  may  pretty  certainly  translate 
it,  was  a  perfectly  possible  name,  if  only  Saul  recognised  Baal  as 
a  name  of  the  supreme  God.  Ishbosheth  was  in  fact  a  nickname, 
used  by  persons  who  were,  not  minded  to  use  the  word  Baal  in 
any  honourable  connexion ;  and  similarly  Mephibosheth  was 
a  nickname  for  Merib-baal.  The  book  of  Chronicles  has,  by  a  sort 
of  accident,  preserved  the  true  name  in  each  case.  Merib-baal 
probably  means  "Baal  contends" ;  and  this  name  doubtless  also 
involves  an  honourable  reference  to  Baal,  just  as  the  name  Jehoiarib 
("Jehovah  will  contend"),  which  we  find  in  1  Chronicles  ix.  10, 
implies  honour  paid  to  Jehovah.  There  was  a  more  ancient  hero 
of  Israel  whose  original  name,  it  is  probable,  implied  honour  to 
Baal ;  this  is  the  hero  and  judge  whom  we  generally  name 
Gideon.  According  to  the  Bible,  Gideon  was  the  real  name  of 
this  hero,  Jerubbaal  a  nickname ;  but  when  all  the  circumstances 
are  considered,  it  is  probable  that  the  reverse  is  the  case  ;  and  that 
Gideon  (which  means  "the  cutter  down")  was  a  name  attached 
to  Jerubbaal  on  account  of  his  valiant  deeds;  just  as  Charles 
Martel  (the  "Hammerer")  acquired  his  second  name  in  mediseval 
times  through  his  warlike  exploits. 

Whatever  be  the  case  as  to  Jerubbaal,  we  may  confidently 
say  that  when  Saul  and  Jonathan  had  sons  to  whom  they  respec- 
tively attached  the  names  Eshbaal  and  Merib-baal,  they  intended' 


252         ISRAEL'S    EARTHLY    IDEAL    ATTAINED:        [ch. 

the  name  Baal  to  be  interpreted  honourably ;  and  the  probability  is 
that  this  was  done  with  but  little  idea  of  rivalry  between  Baal 
/  and  Jehovah;  Baal  was  accepted,  like  Elohim  and  El  Shaddai, 
as  a  fitting  appellative  for  the  Most  High  God.  But  to  Samuel 
the  name  of  Baal  would  be  odious ;  for  the  acceptance  of  it  put 
Canaanit«  and  Phoenician  religion  on  the  same  kind  of  level  as 
the  religion  of  Israel. 

I  cannot  but  think  that  the  deep-seated  cause  of  quarrel 
between  Samuel  and  Saul  lay  in  this  fact,  that  Saul  desired 
a  peaceable  unity  of  worship  between  Israelite  and  Canaanite, 
whereas  Samuel  was  with  all  his  heart  opposed  to  this.  Taking 
this  as  our  clue,  we  shall  see  why  Samuel  was  greatly  offended 
when  Saul  took  upon  himself  to  offer  sacrifice,  Samuel  having 
been  late  in  keeping  his  engagement  to  do  so.  A  king  or  chieftain 
of  unblemished  orthodoxy  might  offer  sacrifice  unreproved  (as 
Gideon,  Jephthah,  Manoah  did,  and  as  David  appears  to  have 
done  afterwards,  2  Samuel  vi.  13) ;  but  Saul  was  suspected  by 
Samuel.  So  likewise  we  must  infer  that  the  mission  on  which 
Samuel  sent  Saul  for  the  extirpation  of  the  Amalekites  (a  cruel 
and  wicked  act  surely,  though  Samuel  treated  it  as  a  religious 
duty)  was  a  kind  of  test  by  which  Saul  might  show  himself  a  true 
worshipper  of  Jehovah.  Saul  did  not  adequately  fulfil  the  test ; 
he  behaved  with  what  we  should  consider  extreme  cruelty,  but 
not  cruelly  enough  to  satisfy  Samuel.  It  is  difficult  to  express 
the  degree  in  which  the  whole  narrative  offends  against  every  moral 
principle  which  we  ourselves  hold  sacred  !  Let  it  be  remembered 
that  when,  some  years  afterwards,  David  commits  the  great  sin 
of  procuring  the  murder  of  Uriah,  and  on  being  reproved  by  the 
prophet  Nathan  for  the  wicked  act,  says  "I  have  sinned";  he 
receives  what  is  essentially  pardon,  though  not  unmixed  with 
punishment.  Yet  when  Saul,  reproved  by  Samuel  for  what  is 
regarded  as  the  great  sin  of  saving  alive  the  king  of  the  Amalekites 
and  the  best  of  their  cattle,  says  "I  have  sinned,"  pardon  is  not 
accorded  to  him  !  That,  it  seems,  was  too  heinous  an  offence  to 
l>e  forgiv'cn,  even  upon  the  repentance  of  the  sinner  !  Let  us 
hope  that  the  story  is  inexact;  for  the  moral  error  of  the  Biblical 
historian,  though  considerable,  is  not  so  great  as  the  moral  error 
of  Samuel,  if  he  actually  said  and  did  wliat  the  Bible  reports  him 
to  have  said  and  done. 

Inexact  tlie  story  probably  is ;  but  it  will  be  difficult  to  free 
Samuel  from  the  reproacli  of  fanaticism.  The  religion  of  men 
cannot  but  share  in  the  imperfection  which  belongs  to  their  entire 


X]  DAVID  253 

train  of  thinking  on  matters  of  right  and  wrong;  and  while  the 

">  attitude  which  Samuel  takes  up  towards  Saul  is  that  of  the  moral 

\  reprover  and  judge,  Samuel  himself  was  all  unconsciously  immersed 

^  in  injustice  and  cruelty.     The  sin  of  these  Amalekites  was  that 

their  ancestors,  some  hundreds  of  years  before  Samuel's  time,  had 

committed  an  unprovoked  attack  on  the  Israehtes  when  the  latter 

were  on  the  first  marches  out  of  Egypt.     Moses  in  his  anger  had 

recorded  a  divine  malediction  against  the  whole  Amalekite  race, 

and  Samuel  interpreted  the  malediction  as  justifying  the  command 

which  he  laid  upon  Saul.     It  was  plainly  only  a  single  tribe  of 

Amalekites  that  were  thus  massacred ;    but  the  iniquity  of  the 

character  of  the  act  is  not  altered  thereby. 

Yet  Samuel  had  an  upright  character ;  we  must  recognise 
this,  while  not  denjdng  the  errors  into  which  he  fell.  If,  as  I  have 
supposed,  the  quarrel  between  him  and  Saul  had  regard  to  the  y- 
question  of  strictness  or  laxity  in  religious  association  with  others, 
the  cause  is  a  perfectly  intelligible  one,  and  examples  of  it  are 
abundant  in  the  world  of  to-day ;  but  the  details  of  it  in  the  case 
with  which  I  am  deahng  cannot  at  this  distance  of  time  be  fully 
clear  to  us.  It  is  some  shght  corroboration,  however,  of  the  view 
here  taken,  that  Saul,  throughout  the  narrative  of  which  I  have 
been  speaking,  while  never  using  either  the  phrase  "Jehovah  my 
God"  or  the  phrase  "Jehovah  our  God,"  does  twice  say  to 
Samuel  "Jehovah  thy  God";  as  if  he  knew  that  Jehovah  was 
more  pecuharly  Samuel's  God  than  his  own :  though  he  by  no 
means  imphed  that  he  did  not  himself  owe  allegiance  to  Jehovah. 
The  rupture  between  Samuel  and  Saul  was  complete ;  and 
the  Bible  now  tells  us  that  Samuel  took  a  momentous  and  startling 
step.  Visiting  the  small  town  of  Bethlehem,  he  summoned  the 
elders  of  the  town  to  a  sacrifice  at  the  house  of  Jesse,  and  there 
anointed  the  youngest  son  of  Jesse,  David,  to  be  king  over  all 
Israel.  In  this  way  is  introduced  to  us  that  historical  character, 
who  in  after  times  was  frequently  reckoned  as  the  greatest  glory 
of  his  nation ;  and  who  certainly  raised  the  Israelites  to  their 
highest  point  of  temporal  power. 

I  must  apologise  to  my  reader,  now  and  many  times  over  in 
the  course  of  this  book  of  mine,  for  the  bareness  and  dryness  with 
which  I  am  compelled  to  refer  to  narratives  which  in  the  Bible 
are  instinct  with  beauty  and  poetry.  Even  that  extraordinary 
story  of  the  massacre  of  the  Amalekites  at  the  command  of  Samuel, 
of  which  I  have  just  been  treating,  is  in  the  Biblical  pages  full  of 
solemnity  and  dignity ;    and  similarly  the  anointing  of  David  by' 


264        ISRAEL'S    EARTHLY    IDEAL    ATTAINED:        [ch. 

Samuel  is  told  in  a  maimer  which  makes  us  feel  that  a  great 
history  has  in  this  act  a  worthy  beginning,  full  of  interest  for  all 
men  through  all  time.  Such  is  the  atmosphere  of  the  Bible  ;  such 
is  its  power ;  and  I  do  not  doubt  that  that  atmosphere,  that  power, 
came  from  a  worthy  source;  only  I  must  add  that  they  reach 
us  through  a  broken  and  darkening  medium.  To  take  the  present 
instance ;  how  can  we  beUeve  that,  if  Samuel  anointed  David  to 
be  king  over  Israel  in  the  presence  of  his  father,  his  brethren,  and 
the  elders  of  Bethlehem,  the  purport  of  the  act  was  not  known  to 
all  present;  how,  if  the  purport  of  the  act  was  known  to  all 
present,  could  it  fail  to  reach  the  ears  of  Saul;  and  how,  if  it 
reached  the  ears  of  Saul,  could  he  pass  it  over  unnoticed?  It 
is  true  that  the  sacrifice  is  apparently  intended  to  cast  a  veil 
over  the  subsequent  and  much  more  important  act,  the  anointing 
of  David,  but  could  it  be  an  effective  veil?  Surely  not.  To 
anoint  David  as  king  was  to  rebel  against  Saul ;  and  Saul  must 
have  treated  it  as  rebeUion.  Yet  Saul,  immediately  afterwards, 
accepted  David  as  his  harp-player;  and  David  very  markedly 
treats  Saul  as  the  true  anointed  king  of  Israel,  and  never  refers 
to  himself  as  having  been  anointed  by  Samuel.  We  must  conclude 
that  that  anointing  was  a  fable.  But  Samuel  is  likely  to  have 
had  intimate  association  with  David,  and  to  have  inspired  him 
with  that  zeal  for  the  worship  of  Jehovah  which  was  in  Samuel's 
own  heart.  Saul  had  worshipped  Jehovah  ;  but  David  worshipped 
Jehovah  exclusively  and  passionately,  and  this  was  what  Samuel 
desired,  and  what  he  had  not  found  in  Saul.  It  is  not  improbable 
then  that  Samuel  incited  David  with  predictions  of  future 
greatness,  perhaps  even  royal  greatness ;  and  David,  being  in  the 
impressionable  season  of  youth,  would  be  much  moved  by  such 
incitements ;  but  further  we  cannot  pursue  the  matter. 

That  David  won  his  entrance  into  Saul's  court,  and  thereby 
the  beginning  of  political  importance,  by  his  skill  in  harp-playing, 
as  the  Biblical  account  tells  us,  is  quite  credible.  Saul,  alter  his 
quarrel  with  Samuel,  was  afflicted  by  a  deep  melancholy  (which 
may  have  been  a  natural  tendency  in  him) ;  and  the  minstrel 
who  by  his  melodies  could  charm  the  despondency  away  was  to 
him  a  priceless  treasure.  Not  only  Saul,  but  Jonathan  the  son 
of  Saul,  was  affected  by  the  chann  of  David ;  and  when  David 
added  to  his  softer  skill  the  valour  of  a  daring  warrior,  Jonathan 
became  absorbed  in  his  friend,  and  appeared  ready  to  think  that 
David,  after  Saul's  death,  would  be  a  worthier  successor  to  the 
royal  dignity  than  he  himself  would  be.     But  to  Saul  this  could 


X]  DAVID  255 

not  be  pleasing;    and  a  germ  of  distrust  was  very  early  laid  in 

Saul's  mind  against  David. 

In  the  arts  of  war,  as  in  the  arts  of  peace,  David  began  to  be 

greatly  distinguished.     The  story  of  his  single  combat  with  the 

giant  Goliath  of  Gath  is  indeed  doubtful ;   for  the  feat  of  slaying 

Goliath  is  attributed,  later  on  in  the  books  of  Samuel  (2  Samuel 

xxi.    19)  to  another  native  of  Bethlehem,  Elhanan;    and  such 

a  deed  is  more  likely  to  have  been  wrongly  attributed  to  David, 

than  wrongly  taken  away  from  him.     Yet  David  must  have  had 

real  warhke  skill ;  and  he  had  besides  those  graces  of  youth  which 

win  the  hearts  of  men,  and  which  Saul,  though  a  good  stout 

soldier,  had  not.     Whether  he  did  actually  kill  ten  times  as  many 

of   the  vapouring  Philistines  as  Saul  was  of  little  consequence; 

the  people  Uked  to  say  that  he  had  done  so ;   and  the  distich 

Saul  has  slain  his  thousands 
And  David  his  ten  thousands, 

was  sung  by  the  women  of  Israel,  when  they  celebrated  the  victors 
with  their  timbrels  and  their  dancing. 

But  by  this  the  jealousy  of  Saul  was  actively  awakened ;  and 
David,  who  had  been  his  good  genius,  now  began  to  appear  to 
him  as  his  evil  genius.  Saul  probably  knew  that  David  was 
loyal  to  himself ;  but  the  train  was  clearly  being  laid  which  would 
lead  to  the  displacement  of  Jonathan  from  his  natural  succession 
to  the  royal  dignity ;  and  the  worst  of  it  was  that  Jonathan  did 
not  resent  his  own  future  exclusion.  This  was  the  prospect  which 
made  Saul's  feelings  towards  David,  in  the  end,  unappeasable. 
David's  life  was  endangered,  and  he  had  to  fly  the  court,  and  to 
take  refuge  in  the  wilds  south  or  east  of  Judaea.  But  he  did  not 
go  alone ;  his  relations,  and  a  number  of  discontented  turbulent 
spirits,  gathered  to  him,  and  he  found  himself  at  the  head  of 
a  band  of  four  hundred  men.  Afraid,  and  with  good  reason,  of 
the  enmity  of  Saul  towards  his  family,  he  brought  his  father  and 
mother  from  their  home,  and  requested  the  king  of  Moab  to  give 
them  protection.  The  request  was  granted;  and  David  might 
have  remembered  in  after  years  the  service  which  the  king  of 
Moab  thus  rendered  him,  better  than  he  did.  It  is  not  probable 
however  that  his  father  and  mother  survived  to  see  him  king ; 
for  we  hear  nothing  of  them  afterwards. 

The  period  of  David's  life  during  which  he  was  a  wanderer 
and  a  fugitive  was  a  period  which  was  signalised  by  much  that 
was  noble,  by  much  also  that  was  savage  and  cruel,  in  his  actions. 
Neither  the  good  nor  the  bad  can  be  to  us  a  matter  of  absolute- 


256        ISRAEL'S    EARTHLY    IDEAL    ATTAINED:        [ch. 

certainty ;  but  on  the  whole  we  ought  to  accept  both.  The 
good  lies  in  his  unswerving  loyalty  to  Saul,  who  was  seeking  to 
kill  him ;  and  it  culminates  in  the  pathetic  scene  (twice  recorded, 
so  that  the  ordinary  reader  of  the  Bible  thinks  it  happened  twice, 
but  no  doubt  the  event  is  the  same  in  both  narratives)  in  which 
David  has  the  opportunity  of  killing  Saul  in  his  sleep,  and  is  urged 
to  do  so  by  his  nephew  Abishai,  but  refrains ;  and  after  taking 
away  from  Saul  some  article  to  prove  that  he  had  had  the  power 
over  him  (a  piece  of  his  skirt  in  one  version  of  the  story,  his  spear 
in  the  other  version)  protests,  though  from  a  distance,  his  own 
innocence.  The  old  tenderness  of  Saul  for  David  revived,  it  is 
said,  under  this  appeal;  "Is  this  thy  voice,  my  son  David?" 
he  cried  ;  and  a  reconciliation  followed.  But  such  a  reconciliation 
could  only  be  temporary ;  it  was  clear  that  David  meant  himself 
to  be  Saul's  successor,  and  it  was  clear  that  Saul  would  admit 
no  such  claim ;  in  the  end,  David  had  to  fly  from  the  land  of 
Israel,  and  to  take  refuge  in  the  court  of  the  Philistine  king  Achish, 
of  Gath.  Here  his  position  was  in  the  highest  degree  critical ; 
for  with  his  men  of  war  following  him  (six  hundred  now  in  number) 
he  could  not  be  the  guest  of  Achish,  unless  he  were  prepared  to 
be  the  ally  of  Achish ;  and  this  meant  fighting  against  Israel. 
Yet,  if  David  were  to  fight  against  Israel,  his  chance  of  being  king  of 
his  own  people  in  after  years  would  be  most  seriously  prejudiced. 
How  was  he  to  find  his  way  out  of  this  dilemma?  In  the  first 
place,  he  persuaded  Achish  to  allow  him  to  five  in  the  town  of 
Ziklag,  on  the  borders  of  the  Israelite  comitry ;  and  here  he  was 
more  removed  from  the  observation  of  the  Philistines,  and  not 
so  liable  to  minute  questionings.  His  subsequent  proceedings 
must  be  told  in  the  words  of  the  Bible  itself  ( 1  Samuel  xxvii.  7-12) : 

And  the  number  of  the  days  that  David  dwelt  in  the  country  of  the 
Philistines  wa«  a  full  year  and  four  months.  And  David  and  his  men  went 
up,  and  made  a  raid  upon  the  (Jeshurites,  and  the  (lirzites,  and  the  Amalek- 
ites:  for  those  nations  were  the  inhabitants  of  the  land,  whieh  were  of 
old,  as  thou  goest  to  8hur,  even  unto  the  land  of  Egypt.  And  David 
smote  the  land,  and  saved  neither  man  nor  woman  alive,  and  took  away 
the  sheep,  and  the  oxen,  and  tlie  asses,  and  the  camels,  and  the  apparel; 
and  he  returned,  and  came  to  Achish.  .\nd  Achish  said,  Whither  have 
ye  made  a  raid  to-day?  And  David  said,  Against  the  South  of  Judah, 
and  against  the  South  of  the  Jerahmeelites,  and  against  the  South  of  the 
Kenites  And  David  saved  neither  luan  nor  woman  alive,  to  bring  them  to 
(iath,  saying.  Lest  they  should  tell  on  us,  saying.  So  did  David,  and  so 
hatli  been  his  manner  all  the  while  he  hath  dwelt  in  the  country  of  the 
Philistines.  And  Achish  l)(;lit>ved  David,  saying,  H(>  hath  made  his  people 
Israel  utterly  to  abhor  him;    therefore  he  shall  be  my  servant  for  ever. 


X]  DAVID  257 

That  is  a  staggering  narrative  for  anyone  who  beheves  that 
the  ordinary  course  of  David's  hfe  was  blameless.  Certainly  it 
is  a  cruel  and  perfidious  act  that  is  described,  and  described  without 
censure,  by  the  Biblical  historian;  an  act  very  antagonistic 
indeed  to  the  fulfilment  of  that  noble  promise  with  which  the 
divine  voice  had  exalted  and  comforted  Abraham,  "In  thy  seed 
shall  all  the  families  of  the  earth  be  blessed!"  But  we  have  to 
remember  that  the  side  of  Abraham's  ideal  which  David  was 
engaged  in  carrying  out  was  not,  on  the  whole,  the  heavenly  side. 
He  had  been  hasty  and  fierce,  even  when  within  the  borders  of 
the  land  of  Israel,  in  his  conduct  towards  Nabal ;  and  it  is  evident 
that,  when  brought  into  straits,  he  thought  it  no  sin  to  extricate 
himself  by  killing  men  of  alien  race,  against  whom  he  had  no 
shadow  of  grievance.  This  was  indeed  merely  to  follow  the 
morality  of  his  age.  Homer,  in  the  ninth  book  of  the  Odyssey, 
relates  how  Odysseus  and  his  followers  attacked  (without  any 
provocation)  the  city  of  the  Cicones,  slew  the  men  and  carried 
off  the  women  and  much  booty ;  the  raid  turns  out  unfortunately, 
but  is  not  regarded  as  a  crime.  So  too  the  writer  of  the  book  of 
Judges  (in  the  eighteenth  chapter)  relates  without  any  censure  how 
six  hundred  warriors  of  the  tribe  of  Dan  slew  the  "quiet  and  secure 
people"  who  Kved  near  Sidon,  and  took  their  lands  from  them. 
If  a  great  hunter  of  to-day,  being  imprisoned  by  a  negro  chief  of 
central  Africa,  were  promised  his  liberty  on  condition  of  his 
bringing  a  himdred  tusks  of  elephants  to  his  captor,  it  is  hardly 
likely  that  he  would  feel  remorse  in  shooting  the  fifty  elephants 
who  would  supply  those  tusks.  As  Httle  did  David  feel  remorse 
in  killing  these  unlucky  Geshurites,  Girzites,  and  Amalekites ; 
it  happened  to  be  necessary  to  his  designs,  and  the  question  of 
morality  did  not  enter  into  his  view  of  the  matter.  Reflecting 
on  this  deed,  we  shall  hardly  join  with  the  Bible  in  calling  David 
"a  man  after  God's  own  heart";  but  we  shall  not  lose  aU  our 
interest  in  him. 

Very  narrowly  did  David  escape  the  danger  he  was  in  at  the 
court  of  Achish.  His  personal  charm,  as  on  other  occasions, 
stood  him  in  good  stead ;  and  Achish  thoroughly  beHeved  in  his 
honesty.  But  the  Philistines  in  general  did  not  trust  him ;  and 
this  turned  out  as  luckily  for  him  as  the  opposite  feeling  in  Achish  ; 
for  thereb}^  he  was  enabled  to  avoid  accompanying  the  PhiKstine 
army  when  they  journeyed  to  battle  with  the  Israelites.  It  is  a 
curious  question,  what  he  would  have  done,  if  the  Philistines  had 
trusted  him.     He  could  hardly  have  avoided  going  with  them  to' 

M.  D.  A.  17 


268        ISRAEL'S    EARTHLY    IDEAL    ATTAINED:        [ch. 

Mount  Gilboa ;  and  would  he  then  have  joined  them  in  good  faith, 
and  fought  against  his  own  countrymen  ?  It  would  certainly  have 
been  his  duty  to  do  so,  when  once  he  had  undertaken  to  accompany 
Achish ;  but  we  cannot  be  quite  certain  what  his  conduct  would 
have  been.  It  was  a  piece  of  the  greatest  good  fortune  to  him 
that  the  Phihstines  themselves  relieved  him  of  his  difficulty ;  and 
Saul  and  three  of  Saul's  sons  fell  in  the  battle  of  Mount  Gilboa, 
the  Israehtes  being  for  the  moment  worsted,  without  David 
having  had  the  smallest  hand  in  producing  such  a  result. 

Immediately  the  tide,  which  had  so  long  been  flowing  against 
David,  turned.  Without  delay  he  presented  himself  in  Hebron, 
one  of  the  chief  cities  of  his  own  tribe  of  Judah ;  and  that  tribe 
accepted  him  as  king.  Northern  Israel,  it  is  true,  did  not  do  so 
as  yet;  but  the  tried  valour  of  David  and  his  comrades,  never 
yet  defeated  in  battle,  shone  out  conspicuously  as  against  the 
defeat  of  Saul  and  the  feebleness  of  Saul's  surviving  son,  Eshbaal. 
In  the  end,  not  without  certain  crimes  on  the  part  of  David's 
friends  (which  David  punished  when  the  offenders  were  weak, 
not  when  they  were  strong),  David  became  undisputed  king  over 
all  the  tribes  of  Israel.  His  own  relations  and  friends  were  his 
chief  servants ;  and  the  priesthood  were  wholly  in  his  favour. 
All  the  parts  of  the  nation  breathed  for  the  moment  a  uniform 
tenor  of  will,  and  were  governed  by  a  vigour  and  a  singleness  of 
motive  that  had  never  been  known  in  them  before. 

Wonderful  indeed  was  the  success  of  the  Israelites  under  these 
favourable  conditions !  wonderful  was  the  success  of  a  purpose, 
held  tenaciously  through  many  centuries,  and  at  last  emerging 
in  full  active  force !  The  stronghold  of  the  Jebusites,  thenceforth 
known  by  the  famous  name  of  Jerusalem,  fell  before  the  generalship 
of  David  and  the  prowess  of  his  nephew  Joab  ;  and  David  acquired 
a  capital  city  of  great  natural  strength,  and  which  soon  became 
dignified  and  splendid  in  outward  aspect.  Philistines,  Moabites, 
Syrians,  Edomites,  and  Ammonites,  fell  in  succession  before  the 
arms  of  David ;  and  his  dominions  extended  now  right  to  the 
borders  of  the  great  empires  of  Assyria,  Babylon,  and  Egypt,  and 
to  the  northern  kingdom  of  Tyre. 

It  is  true  that  this  great  kingdom,  with  all  the  sagacity  and 
enthusiasm  that  had  founded  it,  had  its  weaknesses.  The  rift 
between  the  northern  and  southern  tribes,  between  Ephraim  and 
Judah,  lay  underneath  the  temporary  unanimity  of  tlie  people. 
It  is  certain  also  that  the  loose  popular  religion  of  the  Israelites, 
with  its  worship  of  the  "Baalim,"  was  at  discord  with  the  severer 


X]  DAVID  259 

and  purer  ideas  of  the  central  priesthood;  and  the  jealousy 
between  Ephraim  and  Judah  was  pointed  by  the  fact  that  a  laxer 
religion  was  prevalent  in  the  northern  tribes,  which  were  more 
affected  by  Phoenician  and  Syrian  customs  than  the  mountainous 
region  of  Judah,  in  the  south  of  Palestine,  could  possibly  be. 
Then  again,  the  establishment  of  the  royal  court,  and  presently 
of  the  temple,  at  Jerusalem  (though  the  temple  was  not  actually 
built  till  the  reign  of  David's  successor)  afforded  fresh  ground  of 
discontent  to  the  northern  tribes,  whose  feeling  was  that,  while 
they  were  taxed  equally  with  the  tribe  of  Judah,  the  advantages 
ensuing  from  such  taxation  appertained  in  quite  undue  measure 
to  the  tribe  which  lived  in  the  close  neighbourhood  of  Jerusalem, 
and  scarcely  at  all  to  those  who  lived  fifty  or  a  hundred  miles 
away  from  that  lofty  and  rock-engirdled  city. 

Another  danger  to  the  kingdom  of  Israel  arose  from  the  resent- 
ment of  the  surrounding  nations  whom  David  had  subdued. 
No  small  severity  had  been  employed  in  their  subjugation.  For 
example,  his  war  against  Moab  is  thus  briefly  described  (  2  Samuel 
viii.  2) : 

And  he  smote  Moab,  and  measizred  them  with  the  line,  making  them 
to  lie  down  on  the  groiind;  and  he  measured  two  lines  to  put  to  death, 
and  one  full  line  to  keep  alive.  And  the  Moabites  became  servants  to 
David,  and  brought  presents. 

The  Bibhcal  historian  does  not  think  it  necessary  to  assign 
any  reason  for  this  slaughter;  it  is  not  said  that  the  Moabites 
had  been  faithless  or  treacherous;  even  if  they  had  been  simply 
aggressive,  which  is  a  possibility,  we  are  not  informed  of  it.  Neither 
is  any  special  offence  alleged  against  the  Edomites ;  yet  we  find 
in  the  first  book  of  Kings  (xi.  14^17)  this  incidental  account  of 
David's  war  against  Edom,  which  is  more  briefly  mentioned  in 
the  second  book  of  Samuel: 

And  Jehovah  raised  up  an  adversary  unto  Solomon,  Hadad  the  Edom- 
ite:  he  was  of  the  king's  seed  in  Edom.  For  it  came  to  pass,  when 
David  was  in  Edom,  and  Joab  the  captain  of  the  host  was  gone  up  to  bury 
the  slain,  and  had  smitten  every  male  in  Edom  (for  Joab  and  all  Israel 
remained  there  six  months,  until  he  had  cut  off  every  male  in  Edom) ; 
that  Hadad  fled,  he  and  certain  Edonxites  of  his  father's  servants  with  him, 
to  go  into  Egypt ;   Hadad  being  yet  a  little  child. 

No  doubt  there  is  exaggeration  in  the  destruction  indicated 
in  this  last  passage,  for  the  Edomites  were  not  altogether  a  power- 
less nation  after  this ;  but  we  must  suppose  great  slaughter  at 
any  rate ;  and  it  is  evident  that  Joab,  while  loyal  and  able,  was 
perfectly  ruthless  towards  enemies,  personal  or  pohtical.     Nor 

17—2 


260         ISRAEL'S    EARTHLY   IDEAL   ATTAINED:        [ch. 

had  David  any  sufficient  desire  to  restrain  the  bloodthirsty 
propensities  of  his  lieutenant. 

Truly  it  is  not  on  the  ground  of  universal  beneficence  that  we 
must  praise  the  reign  of  David ;  and  some  may  ask  why  we  should 
praise  it  at  all,  any  more  than  a  hundred  other  reigns  of  truculent 
kings,  who  have  lived  in  brief  splendour  and  then  left  barely 
a  name  behind  them,  such  as  is  read  once  and  immediately  for- 
gotten by  the  sojourner  among  the  records  of  the  past.  But 
the  fibre  of  vital  strength  may  He  buried  among  strange  surround- 
ings ;  and  so  it  is  here.  These  cruelties  of  David  and  the  Israelites, 
which  the  Bibhcal  historians  recount  with  such  calm  indifference, 
were  sins  and  wrong-doings,  it  is  true ;  and  they  produced  their 
natural  fruit  of  retaliation  afterwards,  in  the  disasters  and  sorrows 
of  Israelites  of  later  generations.  Yet,  strange  though  it  may 
seem,  we  must  account  David  a  tender-hearted  man.  The  contrast 
in  the  character  of  a  single  man,  of  tenderness  within  certain 
limits,  and  indifference  to  suffering  outside  those  limits,  is  far 
from  unknown  even  at  the  present  day ;  and  all  through  the  life 
of  David  this  contrast  is  forced  strongly  upon  us.  It  was  not 
a  hard-hearted  man  who  mourned  for  his  enemy  Saul  as  well  as 
for  his  friend  Jonathan  after  their  death  in  battle ;  and  it  was  not 
a  hard-hearted  man  who,  when  Nathan  reproved  him  for  his 
murder  of  Uriah  and  his  adultery  with  Bathsheba,  answered, 
"I  have  sinned  against  Jehovah"  ;  it  was  not  a  hard-hearted  man 
who  prayed  so  fervently  for  the  life  of  his  infant  child ;  and  it 
was  not  a  hard-hearted  man  who,  after  his  rebellious  son  Absalom 
had  been  slain,  cried  out,  "Would  to  God  I  had  died  for  thee, 

0  Absalom,  my  son,  my  son  ! "  It  may  be  asked  whether  we  have 
any  security  as  to  the  truth  of  such  narratives  as  these.  To  this 
it  may  be  replied  that  there  is  no  character  in  the  Old  Testament, 

1  would  almost  say  in  the  whole  Bible,  about  whom  so  much  is 
told  us,  and  so  much  that  is  entirely  probable  and  unexagge rated, 
as  David.  The  accounts  of  his  life  in  the  books  of  Samuel  and 
in  the  opening  of  the  books  of  Kings  occupy  nearly  forty  chapters ; 
and  though  there  is  something  unhistorical  in  the  early  narrative, 
when  he  first  comes  upon  the  scene,  and  a  few  repetitions  in  the 
succeeding  chapters,  yet  on  the  whole  we  have  an  exceedingly 
natural  picture  of  a  spirited  and  vigorous  youth,  with  a  strain 
of  pure  feeling  and  true  religion  in  him,  but  with  the  moral 
imperfections  of  his  time  and  country,  rising  partly  by  his  own 
merit  and  })artly  by  good  fortune  into  royal  power ;  using  that 
power,  as  was  natural  in  those  days,  for  military  purposes,  and 


X]  DAVID  261 

using  it  successfully;  then  sinking  into  the  careless  and  selfish 
habits  of  an  uncontrolled  despot ;  suffering  sorrow  and  calamity 
through  his  children,  whom  he  had  done  little  to  train  in  the  ways 
of  virtue ;  yet  to  the  end  never  losing  that  strain  of  conscience 
which  had  belonged  to  him  in  youth ;  a  man  desirous  of  doing 
right,  though  with  such  serious  failings  as  greatly  diminish  the 
honour  with  which  we  would  gladly  regard  him. 

He  was,  all  through  his  life,  singularly  attractive  to  his  friends ; 
and  though  Absalom  at  one  moment  succeeded  in  steahng  the 
hearts  of  the  people  from  him,  his  friends  did  not  fail  him  even 
at  that  crisis,  and  the  cloud  was  but  temporary.  Why  should 
we  be  surprised  that  one  who  had  so  much  personal  popularity, 
and  such  immense  prestige  as  a  monarch,  should  have  been 
presented  to  us  with  biographical  details  far  fuller  than  have 
been  supplied  to  us  in  the  case  of  any  other  Israelite,  and  equalled 
in  the  case  of  but  few  historical  characters  of  ancient  times? 
And  we  must  remember  that  the  calamities  of  the  nation  sub- 
sequently, after  the  disruption,  made  David's  reign  stand  out 
as  a  pinnacle  of  light  in  the  eyes  of  later  generations.  It  is  true 
that  David  was  not  as  popular  in  northern  Israel  as  in  his  own 
tribe  of  Judah ;  but  this  made  no  difference  as  regards  the  zeal 
of  his  biographers ;  and  the  fact  that  the  priesthood  always  and 
permanently  looked  up  to  him  was  another  reason  for  both  the 
original  full  record  of  his  deeds,  and  the  after  preservation  of  that 
record.  If  we  ask  who  were  his  biographers,  the  first  book  of 
Chronicles  (xxix.  29)  refers  us  to  "  the  history  of  Samuel  the  seer, 
the  history  of  Nathan  the  prophet,  and  the  history  of  Gad  the 
seer."  That  Samuel  wrote  about  David  is  less  probable  than 
that  Nathan  and  Gad  wrote  about  him ;  it  is  likely  however  that 
we  have  evidence  very  nearly  contemporary ;  and  though  the 
chapter  which  we  may  chiefly  presume  to  be  due  to  Gad  (2  Samuel 
xxiv.)  has  undeniable  marks  of  fiction,  it  probably  is  founded 
on  fact.  The  offence  of  David  which  that  chapter  reckons  so 
serious,  his  ordering  a  census  of  the  Israelites  to  be  taken,  was 
very  likely  unpopular  with  many  of  the  nation,  but  was  in  itself 
statesmanlike. 

David,  however,  was  not  a  statesman  in  any  high  sense ;  he 
did  not  wilfully  oppress  his  people,  and  by  the  help  of  his  Chereth- 
ites  and  Pelethites  (a  body-guard  of  Philistine  extraction)  he 
generally  kept  order  in  his  own  neighbourhood ;  but  of  permanent 
institutions  hardly  any  is  ascribed  to  him  in  the  books  of  Samuel, 
beyond  the  appointment  of  certain  officers  attached  to  the  court. 


262         ISRAEL'S    EARTHLY    IDEAL   ATTAINED:        [ch. 

It  may  be  presumed  that  justice  between  man  and  man  had 
always  been  more  or  less  provided  for  by  primitive  local  institu- 
tions ;  and  as  long  as  these  worked  fairiy  well,  the  king  would  do 
better  by  not  interfering ;  but  still  there  would  be  cases  where  his 
personal  judgment  was  necessary ;  and  the  pretext,  and  probably 
in  part  the  true  cause,  of  Absalom's  rebellion  was  the  neglect 
of  David  to  attend  to  such  duties  as  these.  It  is  something,  that 
so  few  acts  of  positive  injustice  or  cruelty  towards  his  own  subjects, 
in  so  long  a  reign,  are  recorded  against  him.  Yet  his  weakness 
in  not  punishing  Joab  for  the  murders  of  Abner  and  Amasa  is 
a  blot  on  David's  fair  fame ;  and  a  blot  which  was  not  wiped  out 
by  his  dying  injunction  to  Solomon,  that  Joab  should  not  be 
suffered  to  have  a  peaceful  death.  The  repentance  which  he  ^o 
deeply  felt,  when  reproved  by  Nathan,  for  his  treacherous  murder 
of  Uriah,  must  lighten  our  censure  of  him  in  that  case  ;  but  another 
cruel  act,  the  putting  to  death  of  two  sons  and  five  grandsons  of 
Saul,  on  the  ground  that  Saul  had  slain  without  just  cause  certain 
of  the  Gibeonites  in  years  long  gone  by,  was  a  base  iniquity 
cloaked  by  the  pretence  of  a  religious  command.  I  would  sooner 
credit  David's  counsellors  than  David  himself  as  being  the  origin- 
ators of  such  a  deed ;  but  David  sanctioned  it ;  and  nothing  in 
his  whole  career  shows  so  plainly  the  weakness  of  moral  fibre 
which  underlay  his  brilliant  qualities.  The  motive  which  led 
to  the  slaughter  of  these  seven  descendants  of  Saul  was  of  course 
the  fear  of  the  possible  revival  of  Saul's  house  in  effective  power. 
The  reproaches  cast  upon  David  by  Shimei  on  this  ground  were 
therefore  not  unjust. 

We  may  fairly  say  that  David  apprehended  the  spiritual 
and  sublime  nature  of  God  better  than  he  apprehended  God's 
moral  nature.  The  honour  of  true  spirituality  must  certainly 
be  accorded  to  him  if  he  was  really  the  author  of  any  of  the 
psalms  in  our  familiar  book  of  Psalms.  It  is  true  that  the  main 
part  of  those  psalms  must  be  held  to  be  of  a  date  far  later  than 
David ;  for  a  captivity,  which  can  be  none  other  than  the  great 
Babylonian  captivity,  is  referred  to  in  some  of  them  (Psalms  xiv. 
liii.  Ixxxv.  cvi.  cvii.  cxxvi.  cxxxvii.) ;  and  even  where  this  is  not 
explicitly  referred  to,  the  tone  of  the  psalm  indicates  that  painful 
contact  of  Israel  with  heathen  races,  and  that  oppression  by 
heathen  races,  which  was  only  exemplified  during  or  about  the 
time  of  the  Babylonian  captivity  (Psalms  ix.  x.  xliv.  lix.  Ixxiv. 
Ixxix.  Ixxx.  Ixxxiii.  Ixxxix.  cii.) ;  and  the  joyousness  of  the  return 
from  the  captivity  is  also  plain  in  other  psalms.     So  too  the 


X]  DAVID  263 

temple,  which  was  not  built  in  the  reign  of  David,  is  frequently 
mentioned.  But  when  all  this  is  allowed  for,  the  probability 
that  psalms  actually  composed  by  David  would  be  recorded  and 
might  be  preserved,  must  be  remembered.  The  second  book  of 
Samuel  attributes  to  him  three  songs  or  psalms;  the  beautiful 
lament  over  Saul  and  Jonathan  in  the  first  chapter;  a  psalm, 
which  is  the  same  as  the  eighteenth  in  our  psalter,  in  the  twenty- 
second  chapter ;  and  one  in  the  twenty-third  chapter,  which  has 
not  found  a  place  in  the  psalter.  The  psalm  in  the  twenty-second 
chapter  may  perhaps  be  an  expansion  of  the  original  composition ; 
the  last  verse  hardly  appears  to  be  genuine ;  but  otherwise,  there 
is  no  person  who  would  seem  so  likely  as  David  to  be  its  author. 
In  the  fifty-first  psalm  of  the  psalter,  the  two  last  verses  can 
hardly  but  belong  to  the  time  of  the  Babylonian  captivity;  but 
they  may  easily  have  been  appended  at  a  later  date ;  and  if  we 
cannot  certainly  say  that  the  main  part  of  this  psalm  was  David's 
confession  of  repentance  after  the  murder  of  Uriah,  at  least  there 
is  no  other  character  and  event  in  the  history  of  Israel  whom  it 
suits  so  well.  A  few,  but  not  many,  other  psalms  might  con- 
ceivably be  David's.  The  uncertainty  which  surrounds  this 
whole  question  of  authorship  is  not  to  be  denied;  but  we  shall 
hardly  be  wrong  in  thinking  of  David  as  a  sacred  psalmist,  as  well 
as  a  warrior  and  a  king.  In  this  relation,  a  greatness  of  spirit 
is  not  to  be  denied  him;  and  when  he  brought  up  the  ark, 
which  contained  the  divine  covenant,  from  the  village  in  which 
it  had  rested  so  long  to  his  newly  won  capital  of  Jerusalem,  he 
hnked  himself  with  the  historic  religion  of  Israel  and  with  the 
great  experiences  in  which  Moses  had  been  God's  chosen  minister. 
He  became  affiUated  to  the  patriarchs  of  his  race. 

We  cannot  indeed  look  upon  David  as  the  equal  of  Abraham 
or  of  Moses ;  he  had  not  the  broad  spiritual  vision  of  Abraham, 
or  the  extraordinary  strength  in  organising,  and  the  practical 
power,  of  Moses.  Yet  the  fervour  of  these  great  men  was  in  him 
too ;  his  sins  were  many  and  his  ideal  was  an  imperfect  one,  but 
something  of  that  glory  which  belongs  to  all  true  perception  of 
deity  had  touched  his  thoughts  and  his  imagination.  As  a  man 
he  is  known  to  us  better  than  any  other  Israelite ;  his  anguish 
at  the  death  of  Absalom  touches  us  even  now,  and  we  feel  the 
attraction  which  so  moved  his  contemporaries. 

For  the  people  of  his  own  tribe,  for  the  people  of  Judah,  he 
had  a  fascination  which  we  cannot  share ;  and  this  was  especially 
the  case  in  times  long  after  his  own  death.     When  Judah  was 


264  DAVID  [CH.  x 

abandoned  by  the  tribes  of  northern  Israel  and  had  fallen  from 
her  high  estate ;  when  Assyrians  and  Babylonians,  and  even 
Edomites  and  Moabites,  began  to  insult  the  successors  of  David, 
to  dismember  and  to  ravage  what  remained  of  David's  ancient 
realm ;  then  prophet  and  psalmist  recalled  the  golden  age  that 
had  been,  and  thought  of  David  with  a  passionate  longing,  and 
took  his  name  as  the  symbol  of  their  highest  hopes.  "My  servant 
David  shall  be  prince  among  them,"  said  Ezekiel  when  forecasting 
the  future  of  Israel;  and  "Blessed  be  the  kingdom  of  our  father 
David"  was  the  cry  of  the  enthusiastic  multitude,  who  many 
centuries  afterwards  took  that  memorable  joiuney  down  the  slope 
of  the  Mount  of  Olives  into  Jerusalem. 

We  cannot  put  David  on  so  high  a  pedestal ;  his  distinctive 
characteristic  was  to  raise  the  nation  of  Israel  to  its  highest  point 
of  temporal  power.  But  it  was  a  fragile  and  brief -lived  ideal  which 
he  brought  to  this  temporary  accomplishment ;  nor  in  the  nature 
of  things  could  it  have  been  otherwise. 

During  the  period  which  I  have  been  sketching  in  this  chapter, 
the  religion  of  Israel  was  in  many  ways  commingled  with  the 
religion  of  Canaan.  A  power  was  at  work  separating  the  two ; 
and  this  power  acted  in  the  end  surely,  but  slowly.  No  doubt 
all  Israehtes  were  circumcised ;  and  sabbaths  and  other  festivals 
were  not  ignored.  But  we  have  little  precise  information  in  the 
existing  records  on  such  matters  as  these. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  FALL  OF  THE  EARTHLY  IDEAL;  THE  RISE 
OF  PROPHECY:  ISAIAH 

In  the  reign  of  David,  and  equally  in  the  reign  of  David's 
son  and  successor  Solomon,  Israel  was  one  of  the  great  nations 
of  the  earth.  "She  stretched  out  her  branches  unto  the  sea, 
and  her  boughs  unto  the  river,"  says  a  psalmist  of  a  later  age, 
recalling  in  sorrow  that  splendid  kingdom,  whose  ample  boundaries 
were  the  Mediterranean  Sea  on  the  west,  and  the  Euphrates  on 
the  east,  which  extended  from  Egypt  in  the  south  to  Lebanon 
and  the  borders  of  Damascus  in  the  north.  But  the  equilibrium 
of  that  great  structure  was  unstable. 

Through  the  reign  of  Solomon  the  Israelite  kingdom  endured, 
and  showed  no  apparent  weakness.  Solomon  was  a  magnificent 
king ;  but  can  he  in  the  true  sense  be  called  a  wise  king  ?  Sagacious 
and  strong-handed ;  on  eminently  good  terms  with  the  neighbouring 
monarchs,  though  harassed  by  some  petty  chiefs  whom  he  could 
not  quite  suppress ;  a  great  builder  of  temples,  palaces,  cities ; 
above  all,  the  builder  of  that  famous  temple  of  Jehovah  in 
Jerusalem,  the  traditional  glories  of  which  are  dear  even  to-day  ) 
to  every  Jew,  and  are  a  familiar  piece  of  knowledge  to  Christians 
and  Moslems  as  well.  But  Solomon  never  perceived,  or  never 
cared,  that  he  was  pressing  burdens  on  the  neck  of  large  numbers 
of  his  subjects,  who  derived  no  adequate  advantage  in  return  for  . 
their  submission  to  these  burdens ;  he  felt  no  reluctance  to  rush 
into  every  luxury,  as  if  it  were  his  personal  right ;  and  when  his 
wives  demanded  "high  places"  in  which  they  might  worship  the  • 
deities  they  respectively  favoured,  the  Israelites  had  to  provide 
the  cost  of  these  edifices.  To  many  Israelites  this  was  a  scandal ; 
to  all  a  grievance.  The  storm  was  gathering,  which  burst  upon 
his  son  Rehoboam ;   and  he  had  no  foresight  of  it. 

However,  he  cultivated  commerce,  maritime  as  well  as  inland, 
and  he  built  a  navy ;  the  most  successful  navy  that  the  Israelites,  • 
it  would  seem,  ever  had.     If  he  had  been  able  to  implant  in  his 


266         THE   FALL    OF    THE    EARTHLY   IDEAL;        [ch. 

fellow-countrymen  the  skill  to  traverse  the  great  deep,  which  in 
the  Tynans  was  so  remarkable,  he  would  have  done  them  a  real 
service ;  but  he  did  not  touch  their  spirits  in  this  way,  at  any 
rate.     Did  he  touch  their  spirits  in  any  way? 

If  we  could  beUeve  that  that  noble  prayer,  which  he  is  said 
to  have  offered  up  to  God  at  the  dedication  of  the  temple,  was 
really  his,  was  the  fruit  of  his  own  feeling  and  thought,  we  should 
place  his  religious  spirit  on  a  very  high  level  indeed ;  for  a  prayer 
more  full  of  the  sense  of  trust  in  God,  more  adequate  in  its  recogni- 
tion of  the  duties  and  of  the  frailty  of  men,  was  never  conceived. 
It  is  not  unlikely  that  something  in  its  general  tone  was  really 
handed  down  by  tradition  or  even  by  writing,  for  the  means  of 
writing  were  at  hand,  and  the  disposition  to  preserve  such  a  royal 
supplication  would  hardly  be  quite  wanting ;  and  some  argument 
in  this  direction  may  be  drawn  from  the  general  identity  of  the 
terms  in  which  the  prayer  is  given  in  the  first  book  of  Kings 
(viii.  22-53)  and  the  second  book  of  Chronicles  (vi.  14—42) ;  for 
though  identity  between  Kings  and  Chronicles  in  reporting  spoken 
words  is  not  unknown,  it  is  not  common,  and  this  is  by  far  the 
most  remarkable  instance  of  it. 

Perhaps  we  may  fairly  say  that  a  prayer  was  really  composed 
by  Solomon  with  the  help  of  the  religious  persons  who  were  in 
general  intercourse  with  him,  of  whom  we  can  hardly  be  wrong 
in  saying  that  the  prophet  Nathan  was  the  most  remarkable. 
Such  a  prayer,  briefly  recorded,  would  be  expanded  in  later  ages ; 
and  though  the  identity  between  the  two  reports  is  in  general 
extremely  remarkable,  they  diverge  in  the  last  few  verses ;  and 
the  divergence  is  such  as  to  show  that  the  writer  of  the  first  book 
of  Kings  had  some  captivity  (and  no  doubt  the  Babylonian 
captivity)  vividly  before  his  mind  as  a  present  or  recent  fact, 
while  the  writer  of  the  second  book  of  Chronicles  (who  was  con- 
siderably later)  lived  in  a  time  of  comparative  rest  and  peace. 
Verbal  exactitude  cannot  then  be  supposed  to  exist  in  the  prayer ; 
but  some  genuine  reminiscence  may  probably  be  in  it.  As  it 
stands  in  the  Bible  to-day,  it  is  one  of  the  noblest  religious  composi- 
tions ever  conceived  in  the  mind  of  man. 

The  same  kind  of  credit  which  belongs  to  Solomon  in  regard 
to  the  prayer  on  which  I  have  been  commenting,  belongs  to  him 
also  in  regard  to  the  book  of  Proverbs.  No  doubt  a  considerable 
part  of  that  book  dates  from  a  later  time  than  Solomon  altogether  ; 
but  some  of  it  is  likely  to  have  been  composed  by  Solomon  and 
his  wise  men ;    the  sententious  tone,  remote  from  prophecy  or 


XI]  THE    RISE    OF    PROPHECY;     ISAIAH  267 

lament  or  invective,  belongs  rather  to  a  time  of  quietude  and 
prosperity.  That  Solomon  himself  was  acquainted  with  the  art 
of  writing,  the  Bible  does  not  tell  us ;  but  his  learned  men  would 
of  course  be  able  to  write.  It  would  be  interesting  if  we  could 
beHeve,  what  the  Bible  tells  us,  that  Solomon  "spake  of  trees,  from 
the  cedar  that  is  in  Lebanon  even  unto  the  hyssop  that  springeth 
out  of  the  wall ;  he  spake  also  of  beasts,  and  of  fowl,  and  of  creeping 
things,  and  of  fishes."  But  there  is  not  much  in  the  book  of 
Proverbs  to  confirm  this ;  the  most  remarkable  passage  in  this 
direction  is  that  which  describes  the  forethought  of  the  ant  (vi.  6-8.) 

It  was  no  doubt  in  furtherance  of  his  zeal  in  building  that 
Solomon  reduced  to  servitude  many  of  the  Canaanite  inhabitants 
of  the  country  (1  Kings  ix.  20,  21);  but  this  must  be  reckoned 
rather  among  his  tyrannical  than  among  his  good  deeds. 

After  his  death  the  crash  came.  The  story  is  too  weU 
known  for  me  to  recapitulate  in  detail,  how  when  Rehoboam 
came  to  be  crowned  king  in  Shechem  (doubtless  in  order  to  receive 
the  homage  of  the  northern  tribes  specially),  he  was  met  by 
Jeroboam  and  other  representatives  of  the  ten  tribes  with  demands 
for  an  alleviation  of  their  burdens ;  how  rashly  and  insultingly 
he  refused  those  demands ;  and  how  the  ten  tribes  of  the  north 
withdrew  their  allegiance  from  him,  and  made  Jeroboam  their 
king.  The  folly  of  Rehoboam  is  proverbial ;  but  are  we  to 
account  Jeroboam  and  the  ten  tribes  blameless?  That  is  im- 
possible. They  knew  their  own  strength ;  and  their  plans  must 
have  been  laid  with  considerable  skill ;  but  they  had  never  asked 
themselves  how,  in  forming  their  new  State,  they  might  recover 
for  the  purpose  of  their  own  cohesion  that  feeUng  of  loyalty, 
which  they  had  broken  in  regard  to  the  old  State.  They  never 
did  recover  it ;  and  the  consequence  to  themselves  was  disastrous. 
Nothing  is  more  remarkable,  in  all  the  subsequent  history,  than 
the  contrast  between  the  unswerving  loyalty  of  the  tribe  of  Judah 
(with  which  it  seems  the  tribe  of  Benjamin  joined  in)  towards  their 
kings  of  the  fine  of  David,  and  the  entire  lack  of  steadfast  principle 
in  the  dealings  of  the  northern  tribes  with  their  successive  kings. 
While  Judah  has  but  one  dynasty,  and  reverences  the  memory 
of  David  with  unceasing  persistence,  five  dynasties,  and  four 
kings  who  founded  no  dynasty,  succeed  one  another  in  the  annals 
of  the  ten  tribes ;  and  the  change  of  dynasty  is  generally  accom- 
plished amid  scenes  of  indiscriminate  blood-shedding.  Some  of 
the  kings  of  the  ten  tribes  appear  to  have  been  able  men  of  the 
world,  in  particular  perhaps  the  two  Jeroboams  and  Ahab  ;    but 


268         THE    FALL    OF    THE    EARTHLY    IDEAL;        [ch. 

there  is  nothing  in  the  whole  political  history  of  northern  Israel, 
during  the  two  hundred  and  fifty-five  years  of  its  duration,  to 
distinguish  it  from  a  hundred  other  transient  kingdoms  which  in 
primitive  days  had  their  rise  and  fall  without  leaving  any  mark 
on  the  world,  like  ships  which  cross  the  ocean  and  leave  no  trail 
behind  them  to  show  where  they  have  been. 

It  is  a  singular  and  a  noble  characteristic  of  the  Biblical 

historians  (who  of  course  were  of  the  tribe  of  Judah),  that  they 

make  no  reproach  whatever  against  the  ten  tribes  for  breaking 

off  from  the  political  dominance  of  the  line  of  David.     That 

rupture,  the  Bible  says,  was  in  accordance  with  the  will  of  God. 

We  may  well  agree  with  the  Bible  in  saying  so;   and  though  we 

may  perhaps  not  put  the  reasons  quite  as  the  Bible  puts  them, 

yet  certainly  the  sin  of  Solomon  lies  at  the  root  of  the  matter, 

as  the  Bible  affirms.     When  a  severe  ruler  does  not  compensate 

for  severity  of  rule  by  imparting  to  the  people  whom  he  rules 

'  a  stimulus  towards  nobler  conditions  of  living,  he  becomes  a  tyrant ; 

and  that  was  what  Solomon  had  become.     It  has  been  one  of  the 

,  great  characteristics  of  the  Israelite  race,  all  through  their  history, 

(  not  to  yield  to  tyranny ;   and  though  they  have  not  always  been 

(  able  to  resist  tyranny  in  warlike  ways,  yet  sometimes  they  have 

(  been  able  ;  and  this  was  a  case  in  which  they  had  the  ability,  and 

used  it.     So  far  as  the  resistance  went,  the  ten  tribes  did  right. 

But  the  Biblical  historians  affirm  that  Jeroboam  sinned 
religiously,  in  taking  the  ten  tribes  away  from  their  religious 
centre,  which  was  the  temple  at  Jerusalem ;  also  in  appointing 
priests  who  were  not  of  the  tribe  of  Levi ;  in  establishing  a  religious 
feast  out  of  his  own  head,  and  above  all  in  setting  up  two  golden 
calves,  one  in  the  shrine  at  Bethel  in  the  south,  the  other  in  the 
shrine  in  Dan  far  in  the  north,  as  idols  for  the  nation  to  worship. 
This  judgment  of  the  Bible  occasions  some  real  difficulty,  as  far 
as  the  last  and  most  serious  item  of  the  censure  is  concerned. 
If  we  are  to  believe  that  the  ten  tribes  worshipped  these  golden 
calves,  how  are  we  to  escape  saying  that  the  prophet  Elisha 
countenanced  this  worship?  Neither  Elijah  nor  Elisha  are 
spoken  of  as  protesting  against  it ;  but  Elijah  was  hostile  to  all 
the  kings  of  Israel  in  his  own  day  ;  his  principal  contest  was  indeed 
against  the  worshippers  of  Baal,  but  he  need  not  be  supposed  to 
have  ap{)roved  of  the  worship  carried  on  at  Bethel  and  at  Dan. 
But  Elisha,  thougli  hostile  to  Joram  the  son  of  Ahab,  had  actually 
a  great  share  in  bringing  about  the  successful  revolt  of  Jehu 
against  .Joram  ;   he  was  evidently  friendly  to  the  kings  of  tlie  line 


XI]  THE    RISE    OF    PROPHECY:     ISAIAH  269 

of  Jehu,  and  one  of  them,  Joash,  came  to  see  him  when  he  was 
Ijring  on  his  death-bed.  The  last  words  of  Elisha  to  Joash  were 
words  prophesying  the  victory  of  Joash  over  the  Syrians;  and 
yet,  if  Joash  were  sinning  deeply  in  the  matter  of  the  golden 
calves,  was  not  the  occasion  one  on  which  Ehsha  was  bound  to 
call  his  attention  to  that  sin?  But  Elisha  does  not,  either  then 
or  on  any  other  occasion,  breathe  a  word  against  it.  Can  we 
think  that  Elisha  approved  of  idol-worship  ? 

I  do  not  think  so,  though  Gideon,  a  few  centuries  earlier, 
appears  to  have  represented  Jehovah  under  the  form  of  an  idol ; 
this  is  not  indeed  directly  asserted  in  the  passage  I  refer  to  (Judges 
viii.  27)  but  seems  to  be  implied.  And  certainly  the  tribe  of  Dan 
in  the  very  north  of  Canaan  worshipped  Jehovah  under  the  form 
of  an  idol,  quite  independently  of  the  golden  calf  set  up  there  by 
Jeroboam :  this  is  apparent  from  the  narrative  in  the  seventeenth  x 
and  eighteenth  chapters  of  Judges.  It  is  possible,  however,  that 
this  particular  idol  was  abolished  in  the  days  of  Samuel,  after 
the  ruin  of  the  sanctuary  at  Shiloh ;  this  may  be  implied  by  the 
last  words  of  the  chapters  I  refer  to.  Speaking  generally,  the 
Israelites  who  followed  the  genuine  Mosaic  tradition  were  not 
idolaters.  But  it  is  probable  that  what  is  called  satirically  a  calf 
was  really  a  cherub,  in  the  sense  in  which  that  word  is  used  in 
connexion  with  the  ark  of  the  covenant,  and  with  Solomon's 
temple.  There  was  a  cherub,  with  wings  outspread,  at  each  end 
of  the  sacred  ark ;  and  much  larger  cherubim  overshadowed  the 
ark  in  Solomon's  temple.  The  cherubim  symbolised  the  divine 
power,  and  were  partly  personified  as  God's  messengers ;  and  this, 
it  can  hardly  be  doubted,  was  the  way  in  which  the  northern 
tribes  thought  of  the  figures  which  are  called  calves,  but  which 
were  probably  cherubim,  set  up  by  Jeroboam  at  Bethel  and  at 
Dan.  It  is  true  that  the  single  cherub  which  (in  spite  of  the  plural 
form  "calves "  used  in  Hosea  x.  5)  was  set  up  in  each  of  the  northern 
sanctuaries,  was  more  likely  to  be  worshipped  as  an  idol  than  the  . 
pair  of  cherubim  placed  on  the  sacred  ark ;  but  in  view  of  the  / 
attitude  of  Elisha  (and  to  a  lesser  extent  of  EHjah  too),  the  prefer-  ' 
able  opinion  seems  to  be  that  it  was  not  an  idol  to  be  worshipped.  \ 
However  it  gave  a  handle  to  this  suspicion,  which  the  prophets 
and  historians  of  Judah  were  not  slow  to  take  advantage  of. 

I  think  we  ought  to  acquit  Jeroboam  of  consciously  intending 
to  introduce  idolatry  into  Israel ;  but  we  cannot  acquit  him  of 
light-mindedness  in  his  religious  measures.  Though  religion  is 
a  spiritual  matter,  and  though  the  material  forms  with  which  it 


270    THE  FALL  OF  THE  EARTHLY  IDEAL;   [ch. 

is  connected  may  for  good  cause  be  changed,  they  ought  not  to 
be  changed  without  some  remembrance  of  the  spiritual  associations 
which  have  clung  about  that  which  is  being  abandoned.  It  may 
have  been  necessary  for  Jeroboam  to  build  new  shrines ;  but  at 
least  he  ought  to  have  shown  that,  in  doing  this,  he  did  not  intend 
any  dishonour  to  the  great  shrine  at  Jerusalem,  which  had  been 
built  when  the  unity  and  the  power  of  the  tribes  of  Israel  were  at 
their  zenith,  and  when  the  emotion  of  the  whole  people  was 
most  ardently  kindled.  Neither  ought  he,  if  possible,  to  have 
established  an  entirely  new  priesthood ;  if  he  could  not  help 
this,  the  justification  for  it  ought  to  have  been  deliberately  pro- 
nounced, and  if  possible  recorded.  Nor  does  there  seem  any 
just  cause  why  he  should  have  ordained  a  new  feast  for  the  ten 
tribes ;  at  any  rate,  we  know  of  no  just  cause  for  this.  There  is 
much  that  we  do  not  know ;  but  Jeroboam  does  appear  to  have 
treated  the  forms  of  religion  as  matters  dependent  on  his  arbitrary 
will  and  pleasure ;  and  a  religion  so  organised  has  no  independent 
authority,  and  little  power  therefore  of  strengthening  a  dynasty. 
This  was  no  slight  weakness  to  the  whole  of  northern  Israel  in 
subsequent  years. 

Yet  as  far  as  material  success  goes,  the  ten  tribes  probably 
thought  at  first  that  they  had  lost  but  little  by  relinquishing  the 
rocky  fastnesses  of  Judsea  to  the  tribe  which  held  fast  its  allegiance 
to  the  Davidic  line.  Not  only  by  far  the  largest  part  of  Palestine, 
but  also  the  only  fertile  parts,  lay  in  the  north,  and  it  is  probable 
that  the  comparative  population  of  the  northern  and  southern 
kingdoms  was  far  more  unequal  than  would  be  inferred  either 
from  the  census  of  warriors  in  2  Samuel  xxiv.  where  the  proportion 
is  put  as  eight  to  five,  or  from  the  report  of  the  same  census  in 
1  Chronicles  xxi.  where  the  proportion  is  given  (approximately) 
as  eleven  to  five.  However  this  may  be,  the  ten  tribes  were  well 
satisfied  with  themselves ;  and  when  king  Ahab,  sixty  or  seventy 
years  after  the  separation,  married  the  daughter  of  the  king  of 
Sidon,  and  was  subsequently  victorious  over  the  Syrians,  and  then 
formed  a  league  with  Jehoshaphat  king  of  Judah,  it  might  almost 
seem  as  if  the  great  days  of  David  and  Solomon  were  about  to 
return  again.  But  Ahab  and  his  dynasty  suffered  shipwreck; 
and  the  cause  lay  in  religion. 

As  far  as  we  can  tell,  the  history  of  the  matter  is  as  follows. 
Though  the  Canaanite  worship  of  the  Baalim  had  never  died  out 
in  northern  Israel,  it  had  been  carried  on  in  country  places  and 
with  no  great  show.     But  when  Jezebel,  the  daughter  of  the  king 


XI]  THE    RISE    OF    PROPHECY:     ISAIAH  271 

of  Sidon,  arrived  at  Samaria  as  the  wife  of  king  Ahab,  she  demanded 
a  temple  of  Baal  of  quite  different  magnitude  and  splendour  from 
those  rustic  shrines;  and  Ahab  built  it  for  her,  and  assigned  to 
it  a  ministry  of  priests  of  Baal  suitable  to  the  edifice.  This  was  : 
perhaps  no  more  than  Solomon  had  done  for  his  wives ;  but  Ahab 
had  neither  the  strong  character  nor  the  prestige  of  Solomon. 
The  next  thing  that  we  hear  in  relation  to  the  religion  of  northern 
Israel  is  that  Jezebel  slew  all  the  prophets  of  Jehovah  on  whom 
she  could  lay  her  hands.  But  it  is  quite  clear  that  Jezebel, 
imperious  woman  though  she  was,  would  never  have  ventured  to 
do  this  if  no  provocation  had  been  offered  her.  The  prophets 
must  have  protested  against  the  erection  of  so  magnificent  a  , 
temple  to  Baal,  and  against  the  worship  which  Ahab,  it  is  said, 
paid  to  that  deity;  and  their  references  to  Jezebel  are  likely  to 
have  made  her  furious.  Without  saying  that  the  prophets  were 
altogether  right,  the  evidence  before  us  is  that  Jezebel  began  the 
war  of  bloodshed ;  to  which  Ahab  weakly  consented.  For  Ahab, 
though  unscrupulous,  was  of  himself  by  no  means  adverse  to  the  , 
prophets,  and  had  some  attached  to  his  own  court,  who  were  of  ; 
course  safe  from  Jezebel;  and  even  the  prophets  of  the  wild 
country  parts  would  have  been  safe,  had  Ahab  alone  been  con- 
cerned ;   but  Jezebel  was  too  strong  for  him. 

The  conflict  which  ensued  was  between  Jezebel  and  the 
prophets.  We  have  no  reason  to  say  that  Jezebel  desired  to 
uproot  the  worship  of  Jehovah  in  itself;  and  conversely,  the 
prophets  would  not  have  inveighed  against  Jezebel,  if  she  had 
been  contented  with  a  private  chapel  in  the  royal  palace,  in  which 
she  could  herself  perform  her  devotions  to  Baal.  But  when 
Jezebel,  by  the  publicity  and  splendour  of  the  worship  which 
she  rendered  to  Baal,  made  Baal  appear  as  a  rival  to  Jehovah, 
this  was  what  the  prophets  could  not  endure ;  and  their  indigna- 
tion was  increased  by  the  fact  that  Ahab  joined  his  queen  in 
worshipping  Baal.  Hence  the  strife,  to  which  Jezebel  gave 
extreme  bitterness  by  killing  as  many  of  her  opponents  as  fell 
within  her  grasp. 

But  against  Jezebel  there  now  rose,  as  the  champion  of  the 
prophets,  one  of  the  most  famous  of  the  characters  who  come 
before  us  in  the  Old  Testament — Elijah  the  Tishbite — whose 
home  was  in  Gilead,  the  hilly  country  lying  east  of  Jordan.  We 
have  no  continuous  knowledge  of  his  career;  he  is  seen  but  by 
flashes ;  but  evidently  his  influence  was  as  long  continued  as  it 
was  great.     It  is  true,  indeed,  that  there  was  a  tendency  in  later 


272        THE    FALL    OF   THE    EARTHLY    IDEAL;         [ch. 

ages  to  regard  him  as  greater  than  he  really  was.  He  did  no  work 
comparable  to  the  work  of  Moses ;  he  had  no  such  mighty  design 
to  carry  out  as  the  deliverance  of  a  people  from  bondage ;  neither 
had  he  that  intellectual  range  which  enabled  Moses  to  compress 
the  cardinal  points  of  morality  within  the  compass  of  the  ten 
commandments.  He  is  rather  to  be  compared  to  Samuel ;  a  man 
of  great  faithfulness  and  practical  power,  having  a  true  sense  of 

)  the  mission  of  Israel  to  the  world,  but  retaining  the  warhke  instincts 
which  Moses  had  kindled  in  the  people  of  Israel,  and  unaware 
of  the  force  which  lay  in  that  fervent  inspired  preaching  which 

)  was  so  abundantly  employed  by  the  prophets  of  Judah  afterwards. 
Elijah  was  indeed  vigorous  in  word  as  well  as  in  deed  ;  but  he 
did  not  know  the  full  force  of  the  spoken  word. 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  great  fame  of  Elijah  in  the  after 
generations  of  Israel,  and  among  Christians  too,  has  been  due  to 
the  splendour  of  the  miraculous  narratives  with  which  he  is 
associated  Ln  the  Biblical  pages.  In  the  whole  Bible,  there  is  no 
miracle  told  with  such  extraordinary  descriptive  power  and  such 
a  feeling  for  the  great  issues  involved  as  is  the  miraculous  sacrifice 
said  to  have  been  offered  by  Elijah  on  Mount  Carmel  in  the 
presence  of  the  people  of  Israel ;  of  "the  people,"  it  is  said  simply ; 
a  great  multitude  are  clearly  intended.  Scarcely  less  powerful 
is  the  narrative  of  his  subsequent  flight  to  Mount  Horeb,  and  of 
his  colloquy  with  God  on  that  mountain ;  and  the  narrative  of 
his  final  ascension  to  heaven  on  a  chariot  of  fire  makes  a  worthy 
third  to  the  other  two  chapters.  But  are  these  chapters,  with 
all  the  power  of  their  style,  convincing  as  to  the  reaUty  of  the 
miracles  described? 

Let  it  be  remembered  that,  while  the  narratives  belong  to 
northern  Israel  (and  Mount  Carmel  especially  was  in  the  north 
of  northern  Israel),  the  Biblical  historian  belonged  to  southern 
Israel,  and  wrote  three  or  four  centuries  after  the  date  at  which 
the  miracles  are  supposed  to  have  been  wrought ;  and  moreover 
that  he  never  tells  us  on  what  authority  he  relies,  or  })y  what 
channel  the  narratives  were  brought  from  northern  to  southern 
Israel.  Bearing  this  in  mind,  lot  us  pay  attention  to  the  details 
of  the  story  in  1  Kings  xviii.  and  xix.  Elijah,  in  spite  of  the  extra- 
ordinary miracle  worked  by  God  on  his  behalf,  in  sending  down 
fire  from  heaven  to  consume  his  sacrifice  (after  the  priests  of  Haal 
had  attempted  a  similar  wonder  in  vain),  does  not  dare  to  face 
Jezebel,  but  flees  far  away,  so  as  to  be  out  of  her  reach.  When 
at  last  he  arrives  at  Mount  Horeb,  he  hears  the  ''still  small  voice" 


XI]  THE    RISE    OF    PROPHECY:     ISAIAH  273 

of  God  speaking  to  him  at  the  entrance  of  the  cave  where  he  had 
taken  refuge:  "What  doest  thou  here,  EUjah?"  The  words 
are  of  the  nature  of  a  challenge;  and  Ehjah  defends  himself. 
His  answer,  if  we  could  forget  the  previous  narrative,  is  touching. 
But  how  does  it  look  when  put  side  by  side  with  the  story  of  the 
miraculous  sacrifice  ? 

I  have  been  very  jealous  for  Jehovah,  the  God  of  hosts;  for  the 
children  of  Israel  have  forsaken  thy  covenant,  thrown  down  thine  altars, 
and  slain  thy  prophets  with  the  sword ;  and  I,  even  I  only,  am  left ;  and 
they  seek  my  life,  to  take  it  away.     1  Bangs  xix.  14. 

Now  it  was  only  just  before  that  EUjah,  with  the  help  of  these 
same  children  of  Israel,  had  slain  four  hundred  and  fifty  prophets 
of  Baal,  after  the  sacrifice  on  Mount  Carmel.  That  the  four 
hmidred  prophets  of  the  Asherah  were  slain  too,  is  not  said; 
but  we  can  hardly  suppose,  in  view  of  the  statement  that  they 
"eat  at  Jezebel's  table,"  that  they  got  off  scot-free.  Is  it  not 
plain  that  Elijah  had  a  large  number  of  aUies,  quite  apart  from 
the  help  given  him  by  God  ?  How  then  can  he  represent  himself 
in  the  above  passage  as  solitary,  without  allies  ?  How  can  he,  who 
had  just  performed  such  a  sweeping  act  of  persecution,  complain 
of  being  persecuted?  Is  it  not  plain  that,  while  the  eighteenth 
chapter  and  the  nineteenth  chapter  of  the  first  book  of  Kings  are 
separately  very  impressive,  they  do  not  tally  together?  It  may 
be  said,  perhaps,  that  the  people  of  Israel  were  very  fitful  in  their 
beliefs  and  actions,  and  that  while  one  day  they  might,  at  the 
bidding  of  Elijah,  slay  four  hundred  and  fifty  priests  of  Baal,  they 
might  the  next  day  be  ready  to  slay  Elijah  himself.  That  is 
possible,  no  doubt,  but  such  a  change  of  mood  requires  explana- 
tion ;  and  not  only  is  no  explanation  given,  but  according  to  the 
narrative  Elijah  does  not  make  the  smallest  attempt  to  confirm 
the  Israelites  in  their  zeal  for  Jehovah,  of  which  so  remarkable 
an  evidence  had  just  been  given.  He  simply  abandons  them  and 
runs  away.     Had  God's  miraculous  power  ceased  on  his  behalf  ? 

It  is  clear  that  the  history  is  confused  and  inaccurate ;  and 
indeed  it  has  in  a  high  degree  the  characteristics  not  of  history, 
but  of  poetry.  The  material  facts  are  transmuted ;  and  this  being 
the  case,  the  literal  truth  cannot  be  recovered  with  certainty. 
But  yet  something  may  be  discerned  behind  the  written  narrative. 

That  Elijah  was  a  real  character  we  cannot  doubt ;  and  if, 
after  a  victory  over  the  priests  of  Baal  (with  a  good  deal  of  popular 
support  behind  him),  he  slew  some  of  them,  but  afterwards  fled 
in  fear  of  Jezebel's  wrath  and  of  Ahab's  soldiers,  we  must  not 

M.  D.  A.  18 


274         THE   FALL    OF   THE    EARTHLY   IDEAL;        [ch. 

accuse  him  of  cowardice.     No  one  is  bound  to  stand  and  be  killed, 

unless  some  good  comes  of  his  standing  and  being  killed.     Ehjah 

was  engaged  in  actual,  positive,  and  most  bitter  warfare ;  to  wage 

that  warfare  not  by  word  only,  but  by  the  bloody  arbitrement  of 

(  fight,  was  the  best  thing  he  knew  to  do ;   not  the  best  absolutely, 

J  but  the  best  within  the  range  of  his  vision ;    he  accepted  this 

1    bloody  warfare,  though  materially  speakiug  he  was  the  weaker 

side.     In  the  course  of  this  warfare  he  was  compelled  to  fly,  and 

his  courage  must  not  be  impeached  for  so  doing.     That  he  went 

^     to  Horeb  is  probable;    the  "mount  of  God,"  the  first  sanctuary 

of  all  Israel ;   he  knew  no  special  sanctity  in  Jerusalem ;   he  went 

v    to  the  spot  where  God  had  first  given  laws  to  his  people.     There 

he  listened  to  the  "still  small  voice"  of  God,  but  not  in  the  mood 

of  one  who  desires  peace,  nor  was  it  the  words  of  peace  which  he 

heard  the  divine  voice  saying : 

Go,  return  on  thy  way  to  the  wilderness  of  Damascus :  and  when  thou 
comest,  thou  shalt  anoint  Hazael  to  be  king  over  Syria:  and  Jehu  the 
son  of  Nimshi  shalt  thou  anoint  to  be  king  over  Israel :  and  Elisha  the  son 
of  Shaphat  of  Abel-meholah  shalt  thou  anoint  to  be  prophet  in  thy  room. 
And  it  shall  come  to  pass,  that  liim  that  escapeth  from  the  sword  of  Hazael 
shall  Jehu  slay:  and  him  that  escapeth  from  the  sword  of  Jehu  shall 
Elisha  slay.  Yet  will  I  leave  me  seven  thousand  in  Israel,  all  the  knees 
which  have  not  bowed  unto  Baal,  and  every  mouth  which  hath  not  kissed 
him. 

No  doubt  these  words  are  tinged  with  the  knowledge  which 
the  historian  of  the  book  of  Kings  had  of  what  happened  afterwards ; 
but  they  rest,  it  is  probable,  on  a  true  basis,  in  the  representation 
which  they  give  of  the  mind  of  Elijah,  and  of  the  way  in  which 
Elijah  interpreted  the  divine  message  to  himself.  Immitigable 
war  lies  in  them ;  not  only  Ahab  and  Jezebel,  but  the  faithless 
people  of  Israel  must  be  chastised. 

Elijah  then  was  prophet  and  warrior;  inspired  by  God,  yet 
having  the  passions  of  man ;  capable  of  acts  of  love,  yet  stern  in 
blood-shedding  also,  when  he  had  before  him  those  whom  he 
regarded  as  the  enemies  of  God ;  bearing  in  his  soul,  as  the  guide 
to  duty,  the  great  memories  of  the  Exodus,  but  not  recognising 
allegiance  to  the  memories  of  David  or  of  Solomon.  It  is  possible 
that  he  had  somewhat  less  tendency  to  localise  the  Deity  than  the 
prophets  of  Judah  who  came  after  him,  with  their  strong  tendency 
to  idealise  .Jerusalem  as  the  city  of  God ;  but  on  the  whole  he  was 
not  their  equal.  Isaiah  and  his  compeers  and  successors  had 
a  higher  function  than  Elijah;  they  threw  themselves  forward 
into  the  future  in  a  way  in  which  he  did  not ;    and  their  feelings 


XI]  THE    RISE    OF    PROPHECY:     ISAIAH  275 

respecting  the  duties  of  man  to  man  had  a  dehcacy  which  we  can 
hardly  ascribe  to  EHjah  (though  we  may  remember  Ehjah's 
reproof  of  Ahab  after  the  judicial  murder  of  Naboth).  He  strove 
to  bring  the  Israel  of  his  own  age  into  righteousness;  but  the 
prophets  of  Judah,  hke  sowers  of  seed,  implanted  in  the  world 
a  development  that  was  to  come ;  and  theirs  was  the  greater 
office. 

The  war  which  Elijah  had  initiated  (or  it  would  be  more 
correct  to  say  accepted  after  Jezebel's  murderous  action)  was 
handed  down  by  him  to  his  successor  EUsha ;  not  so  great  a  man 
as  EHjah,  but  still  not  to  be  forgotten.  It  is  probable  that  EUjah 
felt,  when  he  made  Elisha  his  successor,  that  his  own  death  was 
not  very  far  off.  Before  however  Elijah  died,  Ahab  was  slain 
in  battle  with  the  Syrians ;  if  we  could  trust  the  BibUcal  historian, 
we  should  say  that  Ahab's  behaviour  in  battle  was  not  very 
vaUant ;  but  there  is  something  not  quite  probable  in  the  act  of 
cowardice  imputed  to  him.  Not  long  after  Ahab's  death,  EHjah 
departed  from  this  visible  scene ;  borne  to  heaven,  the  Bible  tells 
us,  on  a  chariot  of  fire,  drawn  by  horses  of  fire,  and  swept  upwards 
by  a  whirlwind ;  but  a  more  ordinary  death  and  burial  will  not 
deprive  him  of  his  spiritual  honour. 

It  is  evident  that  Jezebel's  power  in  northern  Israel  was  too 
great  to  be  easily  overthrown ;  for  she  retained  it  during  the  two 
years'  reign  of  her  son  Ahaziah,  and  during  twelve  years  of  the 
reign  of  her  son  Joram.  But  then  came  war  with  the  Syrians, 
and  Joram  was  wounded  in  battle,  and  returned  to  the  royal 
palace  at  Jezreel  to  be  cured.  Now  was  EHsha's  opportunity. 
He  sent  a  messenger  ("one  of  the  sons  of  the  prophets")  to  anoint 
Jehu  as  king,  and  to  bid  him  execute  judgment  on  the  whole 
house  of  Ahab,  every  male  descendant  of  whom  was  to  be  slain, 
and  Jezebel  herself  with  them.  The  messenger,  after  delivering 
this  message,  was  to  await  no  questioning,  but  to  open  the  door, 
and  flee  with  speed.  Eminently  suited  to  the  occasion  was  such 
a  procedure ;  and  it  was  entirely  successful.  The  message  was 
delivered  (the  full  purport  of  it  was  no  doubt  dictated  by  Elisha, 
though  only  a  summary  of  it  is  put  into  his  mouth) ;  and  Jehu 
was  a  man  to  whom  it  was  welcome ;  it  needed  but  this  stimulus 
to  stir  him  to  action.  Acclaimed  as  king  by  his  companions,  he 
drove  in  a  chariot  to  Jezreel,  a  smaU  company  of  horsemen 
attending  him ;  slew  Joram,  who  had  come  unsuspectingly  to 
meet  him ;  slew  Ahaziah  king  of  Judah,  who  had  come  to  visit 
Joram ;    and  then  slew  Jezebel.     But  slaughter  could  not  end 

18—2 


276         THE   FALL    OF   THE    EARTHLY    IDEAL;        [ch. 

there ;  Jehu  must  not  only  attain,  but  secure  to  himself  the 
throne ;  hence  all  Ahab's  sons  were  slain,  and  all  his  conspicuous 
friends.  Lastly,  Jehu  summoned  together  all  the  worshippers  of 
Baal  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Samaria,  professing  himself  a  devoted 
worshipper  of  that  deity;  and  having  allured  them  into  Baal's 
sanctuary,  treacherously  slew  them.  The  sanctuary  of  BbaI  itself 
he  destroyed  utterly. 

The  writer  of  the  books  of  Kings  cordially  approves  of  these 
deeds.  But  the  prophet  Hosea,  writing  perhaps  seventy  years 
after  the  fact,  did  not  approve  of  them.  He  speaks  in  the  name 
of  Jehovah :  "I  will  avenge  the  blood  of  Jezreel  upon  the  house 
of  Jehu,  and  will  cause  the  kingdom  of  the  house  of  Israel  to 
cease." 

In  this  divergence  of  our  Bibhcal  authorities  we  may  see  the 
gradual  rise  of  a  purer  morality  out  of  the  crude  and  bloody 
methods  employed  in  the  early  ages  of  dawning  civilisation. 
It  was  not  only  king  Jehu,  but  Ehsha  also,  who  was  responsible 
for  the  bloodshed  and  treachery  of  which  I  have  just  given  an 
account ;  and  Elijah  would  no  doubt  have  sanctioned  it.  But 
Hosea  was  a  tender  soul ;  and  though  he  was  quite  as  adverse  as 
EUjah  and  Elisha  to  the  worship  of  Baal,  his  method  of  attacking 
it  was  the  truly  divine  method  of  spiritual  persuasion,  and  this 
is  in  the  end  the  only  victorious  method.  He  was  thus  in  advance, 
not  only  of  EUjah  and  Elisha,  but  also  of  the  Jewish  historian 
who  wrote  the  books  of  Kings. 

Recognising  this,  we  must  still  not  be  too  severe  upon  Elijah 
and  Elisha,  or  upon  our  Biblical  historians.  How  few  of  us  can 
raise  ourselves  wholly  above  the  wrong  methods  and  habits 
accepted  in  the  world  around  us !  It  is  indeed  the  office  of  a 
prophet  so  to  raise  himself,  and  to  raise  his  fellows  also ;  but  even 
1  a  prophet  cannot  do  this  easily,  or  with  perfect  consistency. 
Elijah  and  Elisha  had  the  impress  of  Moses  upon  them ;  they  had 
'  his  faithfulness,  his  courage,  his  spirituality ;  but  also,  Uke  him, 
they  assumed  that  war  and  bloodshed  were  fit  weapons  to  employ 
in  a  combat  which  is  essentially  spiritual.  Long  indeed  was  it 
before  Israel,  long  was  it  before  Christendom,  fully  outgrew  that 
erroneous  temper  and  principle.  But  we  should  remember  that, 
as  Moses  was  impelled  towards  the  conquest  of  Canaan  by  the 
sheer  need  and  poverty  of  his  own  people,  which  is  a  motive 
(whatever  we  may  think  of  it)  not  due  to  religion  at  all;  so  also 
it  could  not  be  expected  or  desired  that  Elijah  or  Elisha  should  sit 
down  quietly  after  the  massacre  of  the  prophets  of  Jehovah  by 


XI]  THE    RISE    OF    PROPHECY:     ISAIAH  277 

Jezebel,  or  should  altogether  abandon  the  methods  'of  material 
force,  perhaps  in  punishing  such  a  crime,  certainly  in  providing 
against  its  repetition.  Brutal  as  the  methods  of  Jehu  were,  some 
action  was  needed  on  the  side  which  he  espoused. 

That  which  was  permanent  in  the  influence  of  Elijah  and 

Elisha  was  their  fervid,  their  exalted  temper;    and  especially  is 

this  true  of  Elijah.     He,  a  person  with  no  advantages  of  station 

^  and  no  practice  in  warfare,  ventured  to  measure  himself  against 

^  a  king  and  an  imperious  queen,  resisting  them,  rebuking  them, 

defying  them ;    and  though  not  wholly  right  in  his  principles  or 

/  his  methods,  yet  animated  by  a  sincere  love  of  justice,  and  trusting 

(  in  God's  support.     He  gave  a  fresh  link  to  a  great  tradition  ;   and 

'i  though  prophecy  did  not  long  remain  a  power  in  northern  Israel 

(perhaps  because  of  the  intermingling  of  warlike  force  with  the 

\  legitimate  prophetic  stimulus)  yet  the  fire  of  Elijah  reached  into 

/  southern  Israel,  and  we  may  beHeve  that  it  kindled  the  genius  of 

'  the  prophets  of  Judah. 

For  it  was  in  the  poor  despised  kingdom  of  Judah  that  the 
purity  of  prophecy  had  its  origin.  There  it  was  that  the  highest 
thought  of  Abraham,  the  thought  of  the  future  blessedness  of  all 
mankind,  so  long  forgotten  amid  the  external  wars  and  internal 
agonies  of  Israel,  sent  out  new  and  living  shoots,  and  was  strength- 
ened by  the  divine  strength,  so  that  it  might  in  the  end  become 
a  universal  principle,  a  fruitful  hope  for  all.  The  prophets  whose 
writings  we  read  in  our  Bibles  all  lived  in  southern  Israel ;  for 
though  Jonah  lived  in  northern  Israel,  the  book  of  Jonah  is  not 
a  book  written  by  Jonah,  but  a  book  written  about  Jonah.  Hosea 
and  Amos  are  sometimes  supposed  to  be  prophets  whose  home 
was  among  the  ten  tribes ;  but  those  who  take  note  of  that  verse 
in  Hosea  where  he  prophesies  that  "the  children  of  Israel  shall 
return,  and  seek  Jehovah  their  God,  and  David  their  king" 
(iii.  5),  will  see  that  he  must  have  belonged  to  the  tribe  of  Judah ; 
a  northern  Israelite  would  not  have  looked  back  on  David  with 
such  affection.  Neither,  it  is  probable,  would  a  northern  Israelite 
have  looked  with  such  scorn  on  the  worship  carried  on  at  Bethel 
(which  he  styles  satirically  "Beth-aven,"  the  house  of  nothing- 
ness) ;  and  the  disparaging  tone  towards  sacrifices  in  Hosea  is 
exactly  what  we  find  afterwards  in  Isaiah  and  Micah  and  Jeremiah. 
As  to  Amos,  he  was  among  the  herdmen  in  Tekoa,  and  Tekoa 
was  in  Judah,  not  in  northern  Israel.  The  main  theme  of  these 
two  prophets  is  the  unworthiness  of  northern  Israel,  but  partly  . 
the  unworthiness  of  Judah  too ;   threatenings  are  most  frequent, 


278         THE    FALL    OF    THE    EARTHLY    IDEAL;        [ch. 

but  more  consolatory  passages  are  not  absent,  especially  in 
Hosea. 

To  Judah  therefore,  as  henceforth  the  kernel  of  the  religious 
power  of  the  race  of  Israel,  we  must  now  return.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  suppose  that  the  rehgion  of  northern  Israel  was  henceforth 
barren  ;  but  there  is  httle  trace  of  its  active  power.  To  the  great 
spirits  of  Judah,  on  the  other  hand,  may  most  truly  be  applied 
that  unrivalled  expression  of  our  great  poet — 

the  prophetic  soul 
Of  the  wide  world  dreaming  on  things  to  come. 

The  word  of  preaching,  the  word  of  warning,  the  word  of  promise, 
in  them  became  government  and  rule.  It  was  the  exhibition  of 
lines  of  truth,  which  if  men  deserted,  they  would  suffer  for  it; 
but  to  which  if  they  adhered,  the  result  would  be  a  prosperity 
and  glory  that  would  never  cease.  The  very  weakness  of  the 
kingdom  of  Judah  was  a  help  to  the  new  method  of  rule.  Never, 
since  the  time  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob,  were  the  highest 
spirits  among  men  so  little  exposed  to  the  temptation  of  using 
material  force  crudely  and  harshly  in  aid  of  their  conceptions; 
and  at  the  same  time  the  moral  feelings  of  the  race  of  Israel  had 
become  more  tender  and  of  more  penetrating  perspicacity  than 
in  the  days  of  those  earlier  patriarchs. 

The  very  tragedies  and  sufferings  of  the  world  became  a  witness 
of  the  new  era  that  had  commenced.  Hosea  and  Amos — to  recur 
to  the  two  earliest  of  these  prophets — make  the  air  ring  with  the 
sound  of  weeping,  of  indignation  at  the  wrong-doings  which  they 
saw,  and  at  the  same  time  with  the  sound  of  love  and  tenderness, 
of  exalted  hope  in  the  future,  of  confidence  in  God,  that  he  would 
restore  good  out  of  the  abundance  of  evil.  These  two  prophets 
lived,  as  far  as  their  writings  tell  us,  before  any  hostility  had 
appeared  on  the  part  of  Assyria  towards  Israel.  Indeed,  Israel 
in  the  time  of  Jehu  paid  tribute  to  Assyria,  as  we  learn  from  the 
inscriptions  (see  Layard's  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  pp.  356  and  357 
of  the  abridged  edition) ;  and  from  various  passages  in  Hosea  we 
see  that  the  ten  tribes  had  a  tendency  to  lean  on  Assyria  for  help. 
Syria,  having  its  capital  at  Damascus,  was  at  this  time  the  chief 
rival  and  enemy  of  Israel.  But  when  the  house  of  Jehu  had 
pas.«ied  away,  this  state  of  things  altered.  Almost  immediately 
we  find  the  kings  of  Assyria  taking  a  hostile  part ;  and  in  the 
reign  of  Pekah  the  son  of  Remaliah,  northern  Israel  actually 
made  an  alliance  with  its  old  enemy  Syria  against  the  king  of 
Assyria,  and  strove  to  draw  Judah  into  the  league.     But  Judah 


XI]  THE    RISE    OF    PROPHECY:     ISAIAH  279 

refused  to  be  drawn;  and  now  we  come  to  the  great  prophet 
Isaiah,  whose  bearing  towards  these  poKtical  questions  was 
peculiarly  his  own. 

With  Isaiah,  Micah  must  be  joined  as  his  contemporary, 
probably  as  his  follower ;  but  Isaiah  has  a  mysterious  power  far 
transcending  that  of  Micah.  Yet  Micah  is  a  noble  prophet  too, 
and  in  him,  as  in  all  these  prophets,  communion  with  God  is 
natural ;  a  fountain  springing  up  spontaneously  and  meeting  the 
eternal  divine  nature  which  reinforces  it.  To  be  just  and  merciful 
and  devoid  of  arrogance  is  the  desire  of  his  soul,  and  in  comparison 
with  this  all  ceremonial  acts  of  worship  are  as  nothing.  The 
ideal  of  a  just  king  who  should  rule  in  Israel,  an  ideal  already 
shadowed  out  in  Hosea  and  Amos,  is  seen  in  Micah  also ;  and  this 
king,  as  in  Hosea  and  Amos,  shall  be  mysteriously  Uke  David; 
for  Bethlehem  is  indicated  as  his  birthplace.  It  is  said  of  him  also 
that  "his  goings  forth  are  from  of  old,  from  ancient  days" ;  and 
in  this  phrase  something  divine  is  no  doubt  intended.  Whoever 
he  be,  this  hero  with  his  comrades  shall  deliver  Israel  from  the 
Assyrian,  and  shall  bring  peace  (shall  be  peace,  is  the  actual  phrase). 
Israel,  under  him,  shall  at  once  be  the  conqueror  of  the  earth, 
and  a  blessing  to  the  earth.  The  unworthiness  of  the  actual 
Israel,  as  Micah  beholds  it,  is  set  in  contrast  with  the  Israel 
that  shall  be,  when  God  has  "cast  all  their  sins  into  the  depths  of 
the  sea." 

These  are  memorable  conceptions ;  and  yet  the  conceptions 
of  Isaiah  are  far  more  memorable.  Let  me  at  once  say,  when 
I  speak  of  Isaiah,  what  writings  those  are  which  I  regard  as  really 
his  work.  The  book  which  goes  by  his  name  contains  sixty-six 
chapters ;  of  which  chapters  the  last  twenty-seven  are  shown  by 
their  contents  to  belong  to  an  era  far  later  than  Isaiah ;  their 
author  was  a  prophet  equal  to  Isaiah  in  the  truth  and  dignity 
of  his  thoughts,  but  a  quite  different  person  nevertheless.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  first  twelve  chapters  of  the  book  may 
fairly  be  assumed  to  be  the  work  of  the  true  Isaiah ;  not  that, 
in  so  ancient  a  work,  we  can  be  confident  of  the  genuineness 
of  every  expression,  but  on  the  whole  Isaiah  is  no  doubt  the 
author  of  these  early  chapters.  As  to  the  chapters  between 
the  twelfth  and  the  fortieth,  some  of  these  are  probably  by 
Isaiah,  as  for  instance  the  twenty-second,  and  the  series  between 
the  twenty-eighth  and  thirty-third  inclusive ;  but  it  is  not  worth 
my  while  to  enter  into  this  question  minutely. 

Let  me  now  speak  of  the  chapters  which  I  have  noted  as  the 


280         THE    FALL    OF    THE    EARTHLY    IDEAL;        [ch. 

genuine  work  of  Isaiah.  The  general  bearing  of  these  chapters 
is,  as  in  the  prophets  of  whom  I  have  just  been  speaking,  reproof 
of  the  present  sins  of  Israel,  and  a  prophecy  of  the  future  glory 
of  Israel.  These  themes  are  mingled  in  unexpected  ways;  and 
a  comparison  of  the  close  of  the  fifth  chapter  with  the  ninth 
chapter  and  with  the  beginning  of  the  tenth  chapter  will  show 
that  there  has  been  some  misplacement  of  parts ;  the  fifth  chapter, 
or  part  of  it,  should  be  connected  with  the  passage  beginning 
with  the  eighth  verse  of  the  ninth  chapter. 

The  style  is  exceedingly  stately;  but  that  which  most  dis- 
tinguishes Isaiah  from  all  the  contemporary  prophets  is  the  deep 
intermingling  of  his  own  personality  with  what  he  writes,  and 
also  a  certain  definiteness  in  his  manner  of  conceiving  the  future. 
Both  these  points  receive  illustration  from  his  sixth  chapter,  which 
I  will  quote  in  its  entirety : 

In  the  year  that  king  Uzziah  died  I  saw  the  Lord  sitting  upon  a  throne, 
high  and  lifted  up,  and  his  train  filled  the  temple.  Above  him  stood  the 
seraphim :  each  one  had  six  wings ;  with  twain  he  covered  his  face,  and  with 
tw«iin  he  covered  his  feet,  and  with  twain  he  did  fly.  And  one  cried  unto 
another,  and  said,  Holy,  Holy,  Holy,  is  Jehovah*  Sabaoth:  the  whole 
earth  is  full  of  his  glory.  And  the  foundations  of  the  thresholds  were  moved 
at  the  voice  of  him  that  cried,  and  the  house  was  filled  with  smoke.  Then 
said  I,  Woe  is  me  !  for  I  am  undone ;  because  I  am  a  man  of  unclean  lips, 
and  I  dwell  in  the  midst  of  a  people  of  unclean  lips :  for  mine  eyes  have  seen 
the  king,  Jehovah  Sabaoth.  Then  flew  one  of  the  seraphim  unto  me, 
having  a  live  coal  in  his  hand,  which  he  had  taken  with  the  tongs  from  off 
the  altar :  and  he  touched  my  mouth  with  it,  and  said,  Lo,  this  hath  touched 
thy  lips;  and  thine  iniquity  is  taken  away,  and  thy  sin  purged.  And 
I  heard  the  voice  of  the  Lord  saying,  Whom  shall  1  send,  and  who  will  go 
for  us?  Then  I  said,  Here  am  I ;  send  me.  And  he  said.  Go,  and  tell  this 
people,  Hear  ye  indeed,  but  understand  not ;  and  see  ye  indeed,  but  perceive 
not.  Make  the  heart  of  this  people  fat,  and  make  their  ears  heavy,  and 
shut  their  eyes ;  lest  they  see  with  their  eyes,  and  hear  with  their  ears,  and 
understand  with  their  heart,  and  turn  again,  and  be  liealed.  Then  said 
I,  Lord,  how  long?  And  he  answered,  Until  cities  be  waste  without 
inhabitant,  and  houses  without  man,  and  the  land  become  utterly  waste, 
and  Jehovah  have  removed  men  far  away,  and  the  forsaken  places  be  many 
in  the  midst  of  the  land.  And  if  there  be  yet  a  tenth  in  it,  it  shall  again 
be  eaten  up :  as  a  terebinth,  and  a«  an  oak,  whose  stock  remaineth,  when 
they  are  felled;   so  the  holy  seed  is  the  stock  thereof. 

The  poetical  imagery  in  this  passage  is  obvious ;  but  it  is  the 
underlying  meaning  that  concerns  us.  It  should  be  noted  that 
Jehovah  is  spoken  of  as  the  king ;  though  the  earthly  king  is 
recognised  by  Isaiah,  the  heavenly  king  is  still  supreme  over  Israel. 
But  next :  the  personality  of  the  prophet  is  recognised  as  an  element 

'  "Johovali  f)f  hosts, "  jicnorally  translated  "Tho  Lord  of  hosts." 


XI]  THE    RISE    OF    PROPHECY:     ISAIAH  281 

not  to  be  forgotten,  when  God  is  seeking  for  a  fit  messenger  to 
send.  Isaiah  knows  himself  to  be  a  man  of  unclean  Ups ;  it  is 
only  when  this  uncleanness  has  been  purged  away  in  the  heavenly 
vision  that  he  dares  to  hsten  to  the  divine  voice,  and  to  be  the 
messenger  to  report  what  that  voice  tells  him.  Even  when  he  is 
purified,  he  is  still  onl;f  a  messenger ;  he  is  not  empowered  to  take 
command  over  the  sinful  people  of  Israel.  Then  comes  the 
message,  every  word  of  which  breathes  scorn  of  that  sinful  people ; 
they  are  not  worthy  to  be  ruled.  To  be  deadened  still  more  and 
to  be  cast  away  is  the  doom  reserved  for  them ;  the  land  shall  be 
made  desolate,  and  not  once  only.  It  is  only  at  the  end  of  this 
sorrowful  denunciation  that  a  word  of  hope  is  allowed  to  enter 
in.  The  holy  seed  will  still  remain;  and  it  is  implied,  though 
not  definitely  said,  that  out  of  this  a  new  and  nobler  plant  may 
grow.  Such  was  the  prospect  of  the  future,  divinely  revealed  to 
Isaiah  in  the  year  of  king  Uzziah's  death ;  and  to  confirm  the 
memory  alike  of  the  threatenings  and  the  hope  involved  in  it,  he 
named  his  eldest  son  (born  shortly  afterwards,  it  is  to  be  supposed) 
Shear-jashub ;  the  meaning  of  which  name  is,  "A  remnant  shall 
return."  Return  to  what  ?  For  the  answer  to  this  question  let  us 
look  to  the  twenty-first  verse  of  the  tenth  chapter ;  the  first  two 
words  of  which  verse  are  in  the  Hebrew  those  very  same  words, 
"  Shear-jashub,"  which  as  a  proper  name  indicate  Isaiah's  son.  "A 
remnant  shall  return,  even  the  remnant  of  Jacob,  unto  the  mighty 
God."  Hence,  when  Isaiah  named  his  son  Shear-jashub,  he 
indicated  his  confident  hope  that  a  remnant  of  Israel  would  return 
to  God. 

Before  Isaiah's  second  son  was  born,  years  had  passed  by ; 
Jotham,  the  successor  of  king  Uzziah,  was  dead ;  Ahaz,  the  son 
of  Jotham,  reigned  over  Judah ;  and  Pekah  the  son  of  Remaliah 
king  of  Israel  had  joined  with  Rezin  king  of  Syria  in  that  alliance 
against  Assyria  which  I  mentioned  above ;  and  because  Judah 
was  unwilling  to  join  their  alliance,  the  confederate  kings  came 
up  and  besieged  Jerusalem.  The  design  was,  if  they  could  take 
that  city,  to  dethrone  Ahaz,  and  in  his  place  to  set  up  as  king 
one  who  would  help  them  in  their  enterprise  ;  "the  son  of  Tabeel," 
it  is  said.  The  tremor  and  perturbation  of  spirit  which  this 
invasion  caused  in  king  Ahaz  and  his  people  may  well  be  con- 
ceived;  "his  heart  was  moved,"  says  the  Bible,  "and  the  heart 
of  his  people,  as  the  trees  of  the  forest  are  moved  with  the  wind." 
This  is  the  situation  to  which  the  longest  continuous  prophecy 
uttered  by  Isaiah  himself  refers ;    it  extends  from  the  beginning 


282         THE    FALL    OF   THE    EARTHLY    IDEAL;        [ch. 

of  the  seventh  chapter  to  the  end  of  the  fourth  verse  of  the  tenth 
chapter.  On  this  passage  I  must  now  comment;  the  political 
situation,  the  character  of  Isaiah,  and  the  highest  hopes  of  the 
people  of  Israel,  will  all  be  illustrated  by  it. 

We  see  from  the  sixth  verse  of  the  eighth  chapter  of  Isaiah, 
where  it  is  said  that  "this  people  rejoice  in  Rezin  and  RemaUah's 
son,"  that  there  was  a  strong  feeling  in  Jerusalem  in  favour  of 
yielding  to  the  confederate  kings,  Rezin  and  Pekah,  and  joining 
them  in  their  rebellion  against  Assjn^a.  Their  rebellion,  I  say; 
for  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  all  these  countries  did  at  that  time 
acknowledge  a  certain  vassalage  to  the  kings  of  Assyria.  Ahaz 
has  so  far  been  a  faithful  vassal ;  but  I  must  think  that  the  seventh 
chapter  of  Isaiah  shows  that  he  was  beginning  to  yield  to  the 
advisers  of  rebellion,  and  to  accept  the  alliance  that  was  being 
thrust  upon  him.  This  is  not  indeed  explicitly  stated ;  but  the 
tenor  of  the  passage  implies  that  this  was  the  case,  and  it  is  probable 
that  it  would  be  the  case.  In  the  end,  Ahaz  did  not  yield ;  and 
if  I  read  the  history  rightly,  this  was  due  to  the  influence  of  Isaiah. 
But  Isaiah's  task  was  not  an  easy  one. 

While  Ahaz  and  his  people  were  shaking  in  their  shoes  (let  me 
be  allowed  the  familiar  expression) — 

Then  said  Jehovah  unto  Isaiah,  Go  forth  now  to  meet  Ahaz,  thou, 
and  Shear- jashub  thy  son,  at  the  end  of  the  conduit  of  the  upper  pool, 
in  the  highway  of  the  fuller's  field ;  and  say  unto  him,  Take  heed,  and  be 
quiet ;  fear  not,  neither  let  thine  heart  be  faint,  because  of  these  two  tails 
of  smoking  firebrands,  for  the  fierce  anger  of  Rezin  and  Syria,  and  of  the 
son  of  Remaliah. 

Does  not  that  look  as  if  Ahaz  was  thinking  of  yielding  to  Rezin 
and  Pekah?  But  Isaiah  assures  him  that  the  confederacy  "shall 
not  stand";  and  adds,  "If  ye  will  not  believe,  surely  ye  shall 
not  be  established,"  and  then  follows  a  famous  prophecy : 

And  Jehovah  spake  again  unto  Ahaz,  saying,  Ask  thee  a  sign  of  Jehovah 
thy  God ;  ask  it  either  in  the  depth,  or  in  the  height  above.  But  Ahaz 
said,  I  will  not  ask,  neither  will  I  try  Jehovah.  And  he  said.  Hear  ye 
now,  O  house  of  David ;  is  it  a  small  thing  for  yoii  to  weary  men,  that  ye 
will  weary  my  God  also  ?  Therefore  the  Lord  himself  shall  give  you  a  sign ; 
behold,  the  maiden  shall  conceive,  and  bear  a  son,  and  shall  call  his  name 
Immanuel  (i.e.  God-is-with-us).  Butter  and  honey  shall  he  eat,  when  he 
knoweth  to  refu.se  the  evil,  and  choose  the  good.  For  before  the  cliild 
shall  know  to  refuse  the  evil,  and  choose  the  good,  the  land  whose  two  kings 
thou  abhorrest  shall  be  forsaken. 

That  is  to  say,  "the  land  whose  two  kings  thou  abhorrest," 
or  in  other  words  the  joint  territory  of  Syria  and  northern  Israel. 


XI]  THE    RISE    OF   PROPHECY:     ISAIAH  283 

shall  in  a  very  few  years  be  made  desolate.  Plainly  that  is  the 
upshot  of  the  passage  i;  but  our  attention  is  attracted  by  the 
sign  to  which  Isaiah  is  appealing.  Who  is  this  maiden,  and  who 
is  her  son  that  is  to  be  bom?  ''The  maiden"  it  is,  according  to 
the  natural  sense  of  the  Hebrew;  not  "a  maiden";  from  which 
one  must  gather  that  Isaiah  knew  whom  he  meant,  though  king 
Ahaz  probably  did  not.  Let  us  wait ;  perhaps  we  may  hear  more 
about  her  in  what  follows. 

We  must  infer,  though  it  is  not  expHcitly  said,  that  Ahaz 
showed  incredulity  as  to  the  truth  of  this  prophecy,  this  "sign" 
to  which  Isaiah  appealed;  and  that  Isaiah  believed  Ahaz  stiU 
to  be  about  to  yield  to  Rezin  and  Pekah ;  for  now  the  prophet 
turns  upon  Ahaz  with  vehement  threatenings : 

Jehovah  shall  bring  upon  thee,  and  upon  thy  people,  and  upon  thy 
father's  house,  days  that  have  not  come,  from  the  day  that  Ephraim 
departed  from  Judah;    even  the  king  of  Assyria. 

The  rest  of  the  seventh  chapter  is  occupied  with  a  vivid  picture 
of  the  results  of  an  Assyrian  invasion  (which  would  naturally 
foUow  if  Ahaz  joined  Rezin  and  Pekah) ;  and  the  eighth  chapter 
resumes  the  theme,  but  in  symbolic  fashion:  let  me  quote  the 
first  eight  verses  of  this  chapter : 

And  Jehovah  said  iinto  me,  Take  thee  a  great  tablet,  and  write  upon 
it  in  common  characters,  For  Maher-shalal-hash-baz ;  and  I  will  take 
tmto  me  faithful  witnesses  to  record,  Uriah  the  priest,  and  Zechariah  the 
son  of  Jeberechiah.  And  I  went  unto  the  prophetess ;  and  she  conceived, 
and  bare  a  son.  Then  said  Jehovah  unto  me.  Call  his  name  Maher-shalal- 
hash-baz  (i.e.  Spoil  speedeth,  prey  hasteth).  For  before  the  child  shall 
have  knowledge  to  cry.  My  father,  and,  My  mother,  the  riches  of  Damascus 
and  the  spoil  of  Samaria  shall  be  carried  away  before  the  king  of  Assyria. 

And  Jehovah  spake  unto  me  yet  again,  saying,  Forasmuch  as  this 
people  hath  refused  the  waters  of  Shiloah  that  go  softly,  and  rejoice  in 
Rezin  and  Remaliah's  son;  now  therefore,  behold,  the  Lord  bringeth  up 
upon  them  the  waters  of  the  River,  strong  and  many,  even  the  king  of 
Assyria  and  all  his  glory ;  and  he  shall  come  up  over  all  his  channels,  and 
go  over  all  his  banks:  and  he  shall  sweep  onward  into  Judah;  he  shall 
overflow  and  pass  through;  he  shall  reach  even  to  the  neck;  and  the 
stretching  out  of  his  wings  shall  fill  the  breadth  of  thy  land,  O  Immanuel. 

Now  what  I  am  contending  is,  that  the  child  mentioned  in 
this  last  passage,  from  the  eighth  chapter,  is  the  same  as  the  child 
mentioned  in  the  previous  passage,  from  the  seventh  chapter. 
Consider  the  context.     The  theme  of  the  two  chapters  is  absolutely 

^  The  words,  "Butter  and  honey  shall  he  eat,"  imply  a  straitness  of  means  even 
in  southern  Israel ;  for  their  force  is  that  the  land  shall  be  a  land  of  pasture,  without 
agriculture. 


284         THE    FALL    OF    THE    EARTHLY    IDEAL;        |CH. 

the  same — the  attack  which  is  being  made  by  Pekah  and  Rezin 
upon  Ahaz  and  upon  the  people  of  Judah,  and  the  imperative 
duty  of  Ahaz  and  of  the  people  of  Judah  not  to  yield  to  that 
attack,  or  to  join  Pekah  and  Rezin  in  their  rebellion  against 
Assyria.  In  both  chapters  the  child  is  used  as  a  sign  to  warn 
Ahaz  as  to  the  course  which,  under  these  circumstances,  he  ought 
to  pursue ;  in  the  seventh  chapter  the  warning  takes  the  form  of 
a  promise  of  divine  help  if  Ahaz  pursues  the  right  course,  in  the 
eighth  chapter  the  warning  takes  the  form  of  a  threat/cning  of 
evil  results  if  Ahaz  persists  in  following  the  wrong  course.  Since 
the  warning  is  in  each  case  conveyed  through  the  name  given  to 
the  child,  the  name  of  the  child  differs  in  the  two  chapters; 
Immanuel  he  is  named  in  the  seventh  chapter,  Maher-shalal- 
hash-baz  in  the  eighth  chapter.  But  this  is  no  proof  that  two 
different  children  are  intended.  For  another  instance  in  which 
the  same  child  is  designated  by  two  different  names  simultane- 
ously, I  may  refer  to  the  second  book  of  Samuel,  chapter  xii. 
verses  24  and  25: 

And  David  comforted  Bathsheba  his  wife,  and  went  in  unto  her, 
and  lay  with  her:  and  she  bare  a  son,  and  he  called  his  name  Solomon. 
And  Jehovah  loved  him,  and  he  sent  by  the  hand  of  Nathan  the  prophet, 
and  he  called  his  name  Jedidiah,  for  Jehovah's  sake. 

The  famous  name  of  Solomon  has  quite  expelled  from  the 
popular  memory  the  name  of  Jedidiah ;  yet  the  authority  for  the 
latter  name  was  the  more  august ;  and  the  two  names  designated 
the  same  child.  So  it  is  in  these  chapters  of  Isaiah ;  there  was 
no  wish  on  Isaiah's  part  that  the  very  awkward-sounding  name 
Maher-shalal-hash-baz  should  displace  the  name  Immanuel, 
previously  given  to  the  child ;  but  he  had  an  urgent  and  terrible 
lesson  to  impart;  and  to  impart  that  lesson,  he  gave  for  the 
moment  another  name  to  the  child.  Instead  of  making  the  sign 
to  Ahaz  and  the  people  of  Judah  consist  in  the  word  which  means 
"God  is  with  us,"  he  now,  under  the  menace  of  nearer  calamity, 
makes  it  consist  in  the  word  which  means  "Spoil  speedeth,  prey 
hastcth."  The  change  in  the  prophet's  mood  is  quite  intelligible 
and  the  result  of  that  change  is  quite  intelligible  also.  If  we 
want  positive  proof  that  the  child  is  the  same  child  in  the  two 
chapters,  we  shall  find  something  which  comes  very  near  to 
positive  proof  in  the  prediction  which,  in  each  case,  follows  the 
giving  of  the  name  of  the  child.  In  the  seventh  chapter  this 
prediction  runs  thus : 

Before  the  child  shall  know  to  refuse  the  evil,  and  choose  the  good, 
the  land  whose  two  kings  thou  abhorrest  shall  be  forsaken. 


3^1  THE    RISE    OF    PROPHECY:     ISAIAH  285 

In  the  eighth  chapter  the  prediction  runs  thus: 

Before  the  child  shall  have  knowledge  to  cry,  My  father,  and.  My 
mother,  the  riches  of  Damascus  and  the  spoil  of  Samaria  shall  be  carried 
away  before  the  king  of  Assyria. 

Clearly  it  is  the  same  child  who  is  intended  in  both  these 
passages.  Further,  if  we  want  a  proof  that  Isaiah  did  not  mean 
the  name  Immanuel  to  cease  to  be  the  true  name  of  the  child  whom 
(for  a  particular  purpose)  he  had  named  Maher-shalal-hash-baz, 
we  shall  find  it  in  the  last  words  of  the  quotation  which  I  made 
from  the  eighth  chapter : 

"The  stretching  out  of  his  wings  "  (or  in  other  words  the  army  of  the 
Assyrian  king)  "  shall  fill  the  breadth  of  thy  land,  O  Immanuel." 

Immanuel  is  here  spoken  of  as  a  child  whom  the  readers  of 
Isaiah  will  recognise,  and  therefore  as  a  child  then  existing ;  and 
the  same  is  also  impUed  in  the  words  which  follow  immediately 
afterwards : 

"Make  an  uproar,  O  ye  peoples,"  writes  the  prophet,  "and  ye  shall  be 
broken  in  pieces ; .  .  .  Take  counsel  together,  and  it  shall  be  brought  to 
nought ;   speak  the  word,  and  it  shall  not  stand ;   for  God  is  with  us." 

The  last  four  words,  "  God  is  with  us,"  form  in  the  Hebrew 
the  name  "  Immanuel,"  and  no  one  can  doubt  that  they  contain 
a  reference  to  the  child  mentioned  just  before.  Is  it  possible 
that  we  can  think,  as  the  Christian  world  has  beheved  from  the 
days  when  the  first  of  our  four  gospels  was  composed  till  now, 
that  when  Isaiah  appeals  to  "  Immanuel "  as  a  sign,  he  is  appeal- 
ing to  a  sign  totally  unknown  and  unthought  of  in  his  own  day, 
a  sign  wholly  unintelhgible  to  those  whom  he  is  addressing,  a  sign 
not  to  be  seen  in  the  world  until  more  than  seven  centuries  had 
elapsed  from  the  time  when  the  prophet  was  speaking  ?  Is  it  not 
the  very  office  of  a  sign  to  be  plain  and  intelligible?  If  so, 
"Immanuel"  must  have  been  a  child  existing  there  and  then, 
visible  to  those  whom  Isaiah  was  addressing ;  and  if  so,  when  we 
look  at  all  the  passages  that  I  have  quoted  above,  he  can  have 
been  none  other  than  Isaiah's  younger  son,  whom  he  had  also 
called,  for  a  particular  purpose,  Maher-shalal-hash-baz.  But  if 
any  doubt  can  remain  on  the  matter,  it  must  be  removed  by 
the  passage  immediately  succeeding  the  words  last  quoted.  Here 
it  is : 

For  Jehovah  spake  thus  to  me  with  a  strong  hand,  and  instructed  me 
that  I  should  not  walk  in  t?ie  way  of  this  people,  saying,  Say  ye  not,  A  con- 
spiracy, concerning  all  whereof  this  people  shall  say,  A  conspiracy  ;  neither 


286         THE   FALL    OF   THE    EARTHLY   IDEAL;        [ch. 

fear  ye  their  fear,  nor  be  in  dread  thereof.  Jehovah  Sabaoth,  him  shall 
ye  sanctify;  and  let  him  be  your  fear,  and  let  him  be  your  dread.  And 
he  shall  be  for  a  sanctuary ;  but  for  a  stone  of  stumbling  and  for  a  rock  of 
offence  to  both  the  houses  of  Israel,  for  a  gin  and  for  a  snare  to  the  in- 
habitants of  Jerusalem,  And  many  shall  stumble  thereon,  and  fall,  and 
be  broken,  ajid  be  snared,  and  be  taken. 

Bind  thou  up  the  testimony,  seal  the  teaching  among  my  disciples. 
And  I  will  wait  for  Jehovah,  that  hideth  his  face  from  the  house  of  Jacob, 
and  I  will  look  for  him.  Behold,  I  and  the  children  whom  Jehovah  hath 
given  me  are  for  signs  and  for  wonders  in  Israel  from  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
which  dwelleth  in  mount  Zion.     Isaiah  viii.  11-18. 

They  are  noble  words.  They  are  words  meant  to  encourage 
and  strengthen  the  people  of  Jerusalem  and  Judah  in  that  day, 
in  Isaiah's  own  day,  against  troubles  which  then  were  pressing 
upon  them.  How  does  Isaiah  encourage  them  ?  By  telling  them 
to  have  faith  in  the  Lord  of  hosts,  Jehovah  Sabaoth.  Of  that 
faith  his  children  are  the  signs ;  and  evidently  he  means  to  appeal 
to  the  names  which  he  had  given  them.  What  were  those  names  ? 
" Shear- jashub,"  or  "A  remnant  shall  return,"  i.e.  to  God:  and 
"Immanuel,"  or  "God  is  with  us."  Those  names  are  the  names 
which  Isaiah  bids  the  people  accept  as  signs.  Would  it  be  a 
tolerable  interpretation  to  exclude  "Immanuel,"  about  whom  so 
much  has  been  said,  from  the  signs  here  indicated  by  Isaiah? 
"Immanuel"  is  of  all  others  the  sign  which  Isaiah  means  to  press 
most.  "God  is  with  us"  ;  that  is  the  thing  which  he  most  bids 
the  people  of  Judah  remember,  "  Maher-shalal-hash-baz "  may 
be  a  sign  too,  but  in  an  inferior  degree,  and  not  to  the  exclusion 
of  Immanuel.  Therefore  the  child  Immanuel  was  one  of  those 
children  of  his  own  whom  Isaiah  speaks  of  as  signs. 

Who  was  Immanuel's  mother?  Not  the  same,  of  course, 
as  the  mother  of  Shear-jashub.  She  is  the  "maiden"  of  Isaiah 
vii.  14;  the  "prophetess"  of  Isaiah  viii.  3.  Whether  the  word 
"prophetess"  is  to  be  taken  in  its  literal  sense,  or  means  "a 
prophet's  wife,"  does  not  matter ;  in  any  case,  the  maiden  became 
the  prophet's  wife  at  some  time  indicated  early  in  the  eighth 
chapter.  If  we  followed  the  Authorised  Version  in  the  second 
verse  of  the  eighth  chapter,  "I  took  unto  me  faithful  witnesses 
to  record,"  we  should  say  that  these  faithful  witnesses,  Uriah 
and  Zechariah,  officiated  in  this  way  at  the  marriage  ceremony. 
With  the  translation  given  in  the  Revised  Version,  "I  will  take 
faithful  witnesses,"  it  is  more  natural  to  suppose  that  Uriah  and 
Zechariah  were  witnesses  of  the  name  Maher-shalal-hash-baz 
being  given  to  the  child  after  its  birth ;   but  this,  as  I  have  noted 


XI]  THE    RISE    OF   PROPHECY:     ISAIAH  287 

above,  was  in  addition  to  the  name  Immanuel.     I  believe  both 
translations  to  be  possible,  and  either  meaning  is  a  good  one. 

Let  me  return,  for  a  moment,  to  the  general  history.  We 
know  from  the  second  book  of  Kings  that  Ahaz  in  the  end  abstained 
from  joining  Pekah  and  Rezin,  and  remained  faithful  to  the 
king  of  Assyria ;  indeed  he  called  him  in  to  his  own  help ;  and 
Pekah  and  Rezin  were  discomfited,  and  Rezin  was  slain.  I  do  not 
say  that  this  appeal  to  Assyria  was  recommended  or  countenanced 
by  Isaiah ;  it  is  hardly  in  tenor  with  Isaiah's  prophecy ;  but  one 
cannot  blame  Ahaz  for  making  such  an  appeal.  However,  in 
any  case  we  must  hold  that  Isaiah  preserved  Ahaz  from  the  error 
of  casting  in  his  lot  with  Pekah  and  Rezin ;  and  it  is  plain  that 
upon  this  being  accomphshed,  Isaiah  breathed  freely  and  joyously. 
The  beginning  of  the  ninth  chapter  is  the  evidence  of  this.  Here 
again  we  have  the  son  mentioned  as  a  cause  of  exultation,  and  the 
exultation  assumes  a  tone  of  victory  unknown  before.  Few 
passages  in  the  Bible  are  more  familiar  to  the  modern  reader  than 
the  verses  in  which  Isaiah  celebrates  the  son  lately  bom : 

For  unto  us  a  child  is  born,  unto  us  a  son  is  given;  and  the  govern- 
ment shall  be  upon  his  shoiilder ;  and  his  name  shall  be  called  Wonderful 
Counsellor,  Mighty  God,  Everlasting  Father,  Prince  of  Peace.  Of  the 
increase  of  his  government  and  of  peace  there  shall  be  no  end,  upon  the 
throne  of  David,  and  upon  his  kingdom,  to  establish  it,  and  to  uphold  it 
with  judgment  and  with  righteousness  from  henceforth  even  for  ever. 
The  zeal  of  Jehovah  Sabaoth  shall  perform  this.     ix.  6,  7. 

But  it  may  be  asked :  Is  it  possible  that  Isaiah  celebrated 
the  birth  of  his  own  son  in  such  terms  as  these  ?  We  have  been 
accustomed  to  think  of  some  one  much  greater  than  a  mere  mortal 
as  the  hero  thus  prophetically  foretold.  It  is  incredible,  it  may 
be  said,  that  Isaiah  should  have  arrayed  his  own  infant  son  with 
these  majestic  appellations;  but  if  it  were  credible,  should  we 
not  be  obliged  to  call  him  an  arrogant  presumptuous  man,  a 
dreamer  of  vain  dignities,  such  as  neither  could  nor  did  come 
to  any  offspring  whom  he  himself  had  begotten? 

No;  Isaiah  was  guilty  of  no  arrogance  in  writing  thus  of  his 
own  son ;  his  prophecy  was  indeed  not  fulfilled  in  the  letter ;  but 
the  spirit  of  it  was  immortal,  and  kindled  the  generations  which 
came  after  him.  It  is  necessary,  in  treating  of  these  words,  to 
remove  one  point  of  difficulty  which  at  the  outset  bars  the  way 
to  a  proper  understanding  of  them.  It  is  said  that  if  Isaiah 
thought  of  his  own  son  as  sitting  on  the  throne  of  David,  this 
(putting  all  other  objections  aside)  was  disloyalty  to  Ahaz,  and 


288         THE    FALL    OF    THE    EARTHLY    IDEAL;        [ch. 

to  the  young  son  and  future  successor  of  Ahaz,  Hezekiah.  But 
the  throne  of  David  was  not  thought  of  by  Isaiah  as  Ahaz  might 
have  thought  of  it,  or  as  the  ordinary  inhabitant  of  Jerusalem 
might  have  thought  of  it.  The  throne  of  David,  as  Ahaz  regarded 
it,  rested  on  miUtary  force,  of  which  but  a  scant  measure  was 
wielded  by  the  people  and  king  of  Judah  at  that  date.  The 
throne  of  David,  as  Isaiah  contemplated  it,  rested  on  the  spirit 
of  God,  and  was  animated  by  a  spiritual  fire  such  as  cannot 
help  subduing  all  things  to  itself.  Isaiah  himself  was  the  possessor 
of  this  spiritual  fire,  and  by  virtue  of  his  possession  of  it  he  had 
cried,  "Seal  the  teaching  among  my  disciples" ;  and  he  had  said 
that  though  the  house  of  Jacob  was  blind,  he  himself  would  wait 
steadfastly,  if  so  be  that  he  might  look  upon  the  face  of  Jehovah, 
the  Everlasting  God.  In  the  vision  of  God  rule  should  be  per- 
fected, and  in  the  vision  of  God  peace  should  be  eternal  and 
unsullied.  That  was  the  kind  of  government  which  Isaiah  had 
in  his  heart,  and  it  was  too  different  from  the  government  wielded 
by  Ahaz  to  involve  any  risk  of  disloyalty  to  Ahaz. 

But  yet  Isaiah  did  not  think  of  this  divine  government  as 
perfected  in  his  own  person.  He  had  said  originally,  when  brought 
before  the  Divine  Presence,  that  he  was  "a  man  of  unclean  lips"  ; 
and  though  his  iniquity  had  been  purged,  he  did  not  yet  think 
himself  worthy  to  exercise  such  rule  as  he  conceived  in  his  heart. 
But  his  son  might  be  worthy.  If  Isaiah's  second  wife  was  really 
a  prophetess  (and  we  are  not  forbidden  to  take  that  word  literally), 
it  may  be  that  he  thought  that  a  double  portion  of  the  divine 
spirit  would  belong  to  one  endowed  with  it  on  both  the  father's 
and  the  mother's  side ;  but  in  any  case  he  thought  that  the  power 
of  the  divine  oracles  would  rest  upon  the  son  who  had  just  been 
born  to  him.  He  himself  had  delivered  his  own  people  from  an 
imminent  danger;  might  not  his  son  do  much  more,  and  guide 
all  Israel  into  everlasting  peace?  The  heavenly  light,  as  he  saw 
it,  was  poured  not  only  upon  Judah,  but  upon  the  northern 
frontier  of  Israel,  where  in  Galilee  the  chosen  people  mingled  with 
the  nations  of  the  world.  In  this  new  dominion  war  should  be 
a  thing  of  the  past.  The  warriors  armour  and  the  garments 
rolled  in  blood  should  be  fuel  for  tire  and  should  pass  away. 

Such  was  the  prophetic  vision  in  which  the  ardour  of  Isaiah 
reached  its  highest  point ;  and  we  must  not  think  meanly  of  it 
because  it  was  not  literally  fulfilled.  We  cannot  suppose  that 
either  of  the  two  sons  ot  Isaiah  played  a  part  of  great  distinction 
in  bringing  God's  spirit  into  the  world;    and  Isaiah,  as  years 


XI}  THE    RISE    OF    PROPHECY:     ISAIAH  289 

went  on,  must  have  discovered  that  this  fulfilment  of  his  words 
was  not  to  be.  But  did  he  resign  all  hope  of  their  essential 
fulfilment?     Certainly  he  did  not. 

But  I  must  hasten  to  the  end  of  my  present  chapter;  Isaiah 
is  the  greatest  man  who  has  been  my  theme  in  it,  and  I  must 
make  his  work  intelligible.  He  did  not,  he  could  not,  speak  to 
all  his  feUow-countrymen ;  he  was  too  high  above  them,  and  they 
could  not  understand  him;  but  he  spoke  to  those  who  would 
Usten.  To  these  he  gave  the  counsel  to  abstain  from  the  vain 
controversies  of  earth ;  to  trust  in  God,  and  rest.  Doubtless  he 
did  not  mean  to  advocate  entire  quiescence  when  the  enemy  was 
in  the  field ;  it  was  not  the  duty  of  self-defence  that  he  disparaged ; 
rather  it  was  the  feverish  fear  which  corroded  the  hearts  of  the 
people  of  Judah,  that  he  deprecated,  and  urged  them  to  lay  aside. 
That  was  his  message. 

Judah  and  Jerusalem  were  saved;  but  as  to  the  northern 
kingdom,  it  needed  but  a  few  years  for  it  to  be  swept  away  by 
the  kings  of  Assyria,  and  many  of  its  people  were  carried  off  to 
Assyria  and  Media,  and  men  of  alien  race  were  planted  in  the  lands 
of  Samaria  and  GaUlee.  Yet  we  have  reason  to  say  that  the 
rehgion  of  Jehovah  never  died  out  in  those  lands ;  weakened  it 
was,  and  no  great  prophet  or  teacher  henceforth  is  recorded  as 
belonging  to  it ;  but  stUl  it  survived,  and  had  a  history. 

But  Judah  and  Jerusalem  had  to  bear  another  terrible  assault 
in  Isaiah's  lifetime ;  this  was  from  Sennacherib,  the  son  of  that 
king  who  was  the  last  to  join  in  the  spoliation  of  northern  Israel, 
Sargon.  Sennacherib  made  his  attack  on  Judah  in  Hezekiah's 
reign.  Hezekiah  had  rebelled  but  had  submitted ;  the  degree  of 
his  submission  however  was  not  accepted  by  Sennacherib,  who 
demanded  that  Jerusalem  itself  should  be  thrown  open  to  his 
troops.  That  condition  Hezekiah  would  not  accept,  and  Isaiah 
supported  him  in  his  refusal.  (What  amount  of  justice  there 
was  in  Hezekiah's  original  rebellion,  or  whether  Isaiah  supported 
him  in  that,  we  do  not  know.)  So  Semiacherib,  who  had  already 
taken  many  cities  of  Judah,  and  had  transported  their  inhabitants 
to  eastern  lands,  now  resolved  to  add  Jerusalem  to  his  captures. 
The  story  of  his  failure  is  too  well  known  for  me  to  repeat  here ; 
his  army  was  destroyed  by  a  pestilence ;  and  he  could  not  replace 
it  by  another.  That  no  doubt  is  the  historical  fact  which  is  clad 
in  a  miraculous  guise  by  the  Biblical  writer^.     The  rehef  to  the 

^  The  history  of  the  siege  of  Jerusalem  by  Sennacherib,  and  its  result,  are  found  in 
2  Kings  xviii.  xix.  and  Isaiah  xxxvi.  xxxvii.  The  historian  was  not  Isaiah;  the 
prophecy  attributed  to  Isaiah  in  these  chapters  is  probably  in  part  genuine. 

M.  D.  A.  19 


290         THE    FALL    OF    THE    EARTHLY    IDEAL;        [ch. 

people  of  Jerusalem  was  overpowering.  There  is  no  denjnng  that 
Judaea  had  suffered  terribly  in  the  campaign ;  and  the  thoughts 
of  the  rescued  nation  could  not  be  all  of  triumph.  Yet  to  Isaiah 
it  appeared,  and  justly,  an  occasion  for  recalling  the  great  destinies 
of  Israel.  But  before  quoting  his  subUme  utterance  on  this 
occasion,  let  me  briefly  explain  the  chronology  of  his  writings  in 
this  part. 

The  famous  passage  at  the  beginning  of  his  ninth  chapter  had 
been  written  in  the  midst  of  adversity,  yet  with  inward  exultation 
and  hope ;  but  the  remainder  of  the  ninth  chapter,  and  the  first 
four  verses  of  the  tenth,  plainly  refer  to  the  fall  of  northern  Israel, 
and  are  full  of  the  terrors  of  that  event.  But  the  remainder  of 
the  tenth  chapter  refers  to  Sennacherib,  and  was  probably  written 
after  his  collapse.  The  eleventh  chapter  however  is  Isaiah's 
true  hymn  on  this  occasion — his  prophetic  hymn — and  now  I  will 
quote  it : 

And  there  shall  come  forth  a  shoot  out  of  the  stock  of  Jesse,  and 
a  branch  out  of  his  roots  shall  bear  fruit:  and  the  spirit  of  Jehovah  shall 
rest  upon  him,  the  spirit  of  wisdom  and  understanding,  the  spirit  of  counsel 
and  might,  the  spirit  of  knowledge  and  of  the  fear  of  Jehovah;  and  his 
delight  shall  be  in  the  fear  of  Jehovah:  and  he  shall  not  judge  after  the 
sight  of  his  eyes,  neither  reprove  after  the  hearing  of  his  ears:  but  with 
righteousness  shall  he  judge  the  poor,  and  reprove  with  equity  for  the  meek 
of  the  earth:  and  he  shall  smite  the  earth  with  the  rod  of  his  mouth,  and 
with  the  breath  of  his  lips  shall  he  slay  the  wicked.  And  righteousness 
shall  be  the  girdle  of  his  loins,  and  faithfvilness  the  girdle  of  his  reins. 
And  the  wolf  shall  dwell  with  the  lamb,  and  the  leopard  shall  lie  down  with 
the  kid ;  and  the  calf  and  the  young  lion  shall  graze  together ;  and  a  little 
child  shall  lead  them.  And  the  cow  and  the  bear  shall  be  friends ;  their 
young  ones  shall  lie  down  together :  and  the  lion  shall  eat  straw  like  the 
ox.  And  the  sucking  child  shall  play  on  the  hole  of  the  asp,  and  the  weaned 
child  shall  put  his  hand  on  the  basilisk's  den.  They  shall  not  hurt  nor 
destroy  in  all  my  holy  mountain :  for  the  earth  shall  be  full  of  the  knowledge 
of  Jehovah,  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea.     Isaiah  xi.  1-9 ^ 

I  need  not  quote  further ;  the  theme  of  the  remainder  of  the 
chapter  is  the  reunion  of  the  divided  houses  of  Israel  under  "the 
root  of  Jesse,"  which  shall  stand  "for  an  ensign"  and  for  a 
meeting-place  of  all  the  nations,  their  rest  and  their  hope. 

Truly  the  prophet,  in  uttering  these  glowing  words,  did  not 
"judge  after  the  sight  of  his  eyes"  !  What  he  saw  with  his  eyes 
was  the  devastation  of  his  country :  Ephraim  swept  away,  Judah 
in  part  swept  away ;  and  as  to  those  who  remained,  were  they 
not  the  same  people  to  whom  he  had  been  sent  in  anger,  to  seal 

1  Two  sliglit.  alteratioii.s  in  the  reading  and  in  the  translation  of  this  passage  I 
have  borrowwi  from  Mr  G.  H.  Box's  Book  of  Isaiah. 


XI]  THE    RISE    OF   PROPHECY:    ISAIAH  291 

their  ears  and  close  their  eyes,  lest  they  should  see,  and  hear,  and 
understand,  and  be  healed?  Yet  he  prophesied  peace  and  glory 
in  the  future,  and  he  prophesied  truly.  What  more  shall  I  say 
of  him?  Let  me  quote  from  him  one  more  noble  passage,  pro- 
phesying the  unity  of  the  nations : 

In  that  day  shall  Israel  be  the  third  with  Egypt  and  with  Assyria, 
a  blessing  in  the  midst  of  the  earth ;  for  that  Jehovah  Sabaoth  hath  blessed 
them,  saying,  Blessed  be  Egypt  my  people,  and  Assyria  the  work  of  my 
hands,  and  Israel  mine  inheritance.     Ibid.  xix.  24,  25. 

And  yet  another,  spoken  in  the  name  of  Jehovah,  inimitable  in 
its  scorn  of  reUgious  formaUsts  : 

Their  fear  of  me  is  a  commandment  of  men  which  hath  been  learned 
by  rote.     Ibid.  xxix.  13. 

Isaiah  is  one  of  the  landmarks  of  history ;  the  first  who  sketched 
the  kingdom  of  God  upon  earth.  Of  his  outward  acts  but  Httle 
is  recorded ;  but  he  breathes  for  all  time  the  fragrance  of  an  im- 
mortal hope. 


19—2 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE   HEAVENLY   IDEAL   IN   CONFLICT: 
JEREMIAH   AND    EZEKIEL 

In  Isaiah  and  in  the  prophets  contemporary  with  him,  but 
most  of  ail  in  Isaiah,  we  see  the  return  to  a  purity  in  the  conception 
of  the  divine  ideal  such  as  there  had  not  been  since  Abraham, 
and  a  higher  morality  than  even  Abraham  had  been  able  to 
conceive.  Not  that  I  am  disparaging  the  great  Israehtes  who 
intervened  between  Abraham  and  Isaiah,  such  as  Moses  and 
Samuel  and  David  and  Elijah ;  but  all  of  these  looked  upon 
warfare  and  blood- shedding  not  only  as  legitimate,  which  in  the 
difficult  circumstances  of  hfe  it  sometimes  is,  but  also  as  a  divine 
method  of  action,  when  aimed  against  the  enemies  of  God ;  and 
herein  they  were  mistaken.  Though  this  mistake  was  not  formally 
repudiated  by  any  of  the  prophets  of  the  Old  Testament,  it  lost 
its  hold  upon  them  ;  it  is  the  sword  of  the  spirit  which  the  prophets 
use,  not  the  sword  of  physical  warfare. 

Changes  in  religious  conduct  are  not,  however,  to  be  accom- 
plished with  absolute  suddenness ;  and  a  greater  spirituality  was 
not  the  only  difference  which  now  began  to  show  itself  between  the 
Israel  of  the  past  and  that  Israel  which  in  the  reign  of  Hezekiah 
was  sending  out  its  first  tender  buds.  Another  tendency  showed 
itself ;  the  tendency  to  centralise  religious  worship,  and  to  make 
it  uniform.  This  was  not  naturally  a  tendency  of  the  prophets ; 
who,  though  they  assumed  as  a  matter  of  course  a  unity  of  spirit 
in  religion,  were  elevated  above  a  compulsory  unity  of  outward 
worship.  Still  the  prophets  of  Judah  did  regard  with  great 
affection  the  city  of  Jerusalem ;  the  past  historj^  of  Israel  was 
dear  to  them,  and  the  temple,  and  the  sacred  ark  which  had  had 
so  long  and  remarkable  a  history ;  so  that  to  a  certain  extent  the 
spirituality  of  the  prophets  did  go  hand  in  hand  with  centralisation 
in  reUgion.  The  priests,  in  the  reign  of  Hezekiah,  were  in 
alliance  with  the  prophets ;    less  spiritual,  but  more  disposed  to 


CH.  xn]  JEREMIAH   AND    EZEKIEL 

centralisation;  the  prophets  disapproved  of  the  abundance  of 
sacrifices  carried  on  throughout  the  country  because  such  worship 
was  merely  material,  the  priests,  because  it  was  apt  to  discard 
authority.  Both  prophet  and  priest  contended  against  the  Baal- 
worship,  though  this  was  not  so  prevalent  in  Judah  as  in 
northern  Israel;  it  is  only  distantly  referred  to  in  Isaiah  and 
Micah. 

These  tendencies  of  prophet  and  priest  had  no  small  influence 
on  king  Hezekiah  himself,  to  whom  we  must  ascribe  the  first 
serious  attempt  forcibly  to  centralise  the  rehgion  of  Israel; 
his  proceedings  are  thus  described  in  the  second  book  of  Kings 
(xviii.  4) : 

He  removed  the  high  places,  and  brake  the  pillars,  and  cut  down  the 
Asherah :  and  he  brake  in  pieces  the  brasen  serpent  that  Moses  had  made ; 
for  unto  those  days  the  children  of  Israel  did  burn  incense  to  it;  and  he 
called  it  Nehvishtan  (i.e.  a  piece  of  brass). 

It  is  Hkely  that  Isaiah  looked  with  some  approval  on  these 
measures  of  king  Hezekiah;  but  we  do  not  know  his  precise 
attitude  towards  them.  One  cannot  help  thinking  that  Hezekiah's 
reforms  went  dangerously  beyond  the  common  sentiment  of  the 
people  of  Judah  in  his  day;  for  in  the  next  reign,  the  reign  of 
Manasseh  the  son  of  Hezekiah,  a  tremendous  reaction  took 
place,  and  idolatry  was  introduced  into  the  kingdom  of  Judah  to 
an  extent  never  known  before.  The  reformers  of  Hezekiah's 
time,  who  no  doubt  resisted  this  reaction  to  the  utmost  of  their 
power,  were  swept  away  with  great  bloodshed ;  for  we  read  that 
Manasseh  "shed  innocent  blood  very  much,  till  he  had  filled 
Jerusalem  from  one  end  to  another"  (2  Kings  xxi.  16).  Tradition 
says  that  Isaiah  was  one  of  those  so  slain ;  but  there  is  no  certain 
record  of  this. 

If  the  reign  of  Hezekiah  had  been  one  of  external  prosperity, 
his  reforms  would  probably  have  endured  without  challenge. 
But  the  invasion  of  Sennacherib  produced  the  greatest  suffering 
in  Judah,  and  weakness  as  well  as  suffering,  and  the  reHgious 
poHcy  of  Hezekiah,  it  is  plain,  excited  distrust  in  the  mass  of  the 
people.  Thus  it  befell  that  the  reign  of  his  successor  Manasseh 
was  what  it  was,  a  time  of  degradation,  referred  to  afterwards 
with  remorse  and  horror.  Fifty-five  years  did  Manasseh  reign 
in  Jerusalem.  As  to  what  was  happening  in  those  cities  of  Judah 
whose  inhabitants  had  been  swept  away  by  Sennacherib,  there  is 
no  record ;  probably  the  poorest  of  the  people  were  left ;  and 
some  restoration  of  inhabitants  there  must  have  been,  for  the 


294         THE   HEAVENLY   IDEAL   IN   CONFLICT:        [oh. 

cities  of  Judah  are  not  spoken  of  afterwards  as  a  mere  desolation, 
either  in  the  second  book  of  Kings  or  in  the  prophecies  of  Jeremiah. 
But  all  religious  guidance  had  gone  out  of  the  land:  not  one 
single  prophet  is  named  as  living  and  teaching  during  the  whole 
of  this  long  reign.  Random  idolatries,  aimless  superstitions, 
held  by  turns  the  undiscriminating  minds  of  king,  nobles,  and 
people.  The  lofty  encouragements  of  Isaiah  dwelt  in  the  minds 
of  a  few,  but  by  the  people  at  large  they  were  absolutely  forgotten. 

We  do  not  even  know  for  certain  one  single  event  that  happened 
during  these  fifty-five  years.  Long  afterwards  it  was  alleged,  and 
the  story  is  found  in  the  second  book  of  Chronicles,  that  Manasseh 
was  captured  by  the  king  of  Assyria,  and  taken  in  chains  to 
Babylon,  where  under  the  pressure  of  calamity  he  is  said  to  have 
repented  of  his  polytheistic  idolatry ;  and  being  presently  restored 
to  his  kingdom,  he  is  said  to  have  abolished  all  his  idols  and  the 
idolatrous  altars.  But  it  is  impossible  not  to  regard  this  story 
as  a  fable,  invented  for  a  purpose  regarded  as  pious.  We  find 
the  full  flood  of  idolatry  going  on  in  the  reign  of  Amon,  the  son 
and  successor  of  Manasseh,  and  even  in  the  early  years  of  the 
reign  of  Josiah ;  and  not  the  smallest  hint  is  given  of  the  previous 
abolition  of  idolatry  by  Manasseh,  which  would  have  necessitated 
a  restoration  of  the  idols  which  had  been  cast  away.  And  how 
could  the  writer  of  the  books  of  Kings  have  been  ignorant  of  so 
striking  a  fact  as  the  repentance  of  Manasseh,  if  it  had  really 
occurred?  For  it  would  have  been  an  event  not  easily  to  be 
forgotten.  If,  again,  we  ask  whether  the  Chronicler  is  a  writer 
capable  of  romancing,  it  is  difiicult  to  deny  this,  in  view  of  the 
immense  victories  which  he  attributes  to  the  pious  kings  Abijah 
and  Asa,  and  other  narratives  which  will  easily  be  discovered  on 
a  perusal  of  the  books  of  Chronicles.  Further,  though  it  is  no 
doubt  possible  that  the  king  of  Assyria,  if  he  took  Manasseh 
captive,  should  have  located  him  in  Babylon  (which  at  that  time 
was  subject  to  Assyria),  yet  it  is  difficult  not  to  think  that  the 
Chronicler  is  here  naming  Babylon  as  the  capital  of  the  Assyrian 
monarchy,  which  it  never  was.  Nineveh  was  the  capital  of  the 
Assyrian  monarchy ;  but  long  before  the  books  of  Chronicles 
were  written,  Nineveh  had  been  so  utterly  destroyed  that  only 
the  faintest  memory  of  it  dwelt  in  the  minds  of  men,  and  it  is 
not  once  mentioned  in  the  books  of  Chronicles.  The  Chronicler 
may  very  well  have  forgotten  that  there  ever  was  such  a  city. 

We  may  say  then  with  some  confidence  that  Manasseh  never 
was  taken  captive,  but  lived  out  the  whole  of  his  impious  life  on 


xn]  JEREMIAH   AND    EZEKIEL  295 

the  throne  which  he  had  inherited.  A  strong-handed  king  he 
must  have  been  to  Uve  so  long  in  his  dangerous  position.  But 
it  is  likely  that  he  was  popular  with  most  of  his  subjects,  whom 
he  aUowed  to  go  their  own  ways  in  religious  matters ;  and  it  would 
seem  also  that  he  took  possession  of  much  of  the  half -deserted 
land  of  northern  Israel.  At  all  events  we  find  part  of  this  land 
subject  to  his  grandson  Josiah ;  and  if  Josiah  himself  had  subdued 
it,  we  should  probably  have  been  told  of  this.  However  this  may 
be,  the  people  of  Judah  showed  no  desire  to  overthrow  Manasseh 
or  his  descendants ;  and  when  Amon,  the  son  of  Manasseh,  was 
slain  by  his  own  servants,  Josiah  son  of  Amon  quietly  became 
king,  a  boy  only  eight  years  old. 

Then  the  reformers  took  heart  again.  When  I  speak  of  the 
reformers,  it  must  be  understood  that  I  mean  those  who,  for  more 
than  a  thousand  years,  had  been  cherishing  the  Abrahamic  tradi- 
tion; who  had  been  keeping  it  separate,  aU  along,  from  the 
religions  of  the  nations  round  them ;  who  had  valued  it  in  its 
historical  aspect,  as  a  true  record  of  divine  powers  and  promises ; 
who  had  associated  it  with  a  morality  in  which  the  duties  of  man 
to  man  were  recognised  and  set  forth  in  detail.  I  do  not  claim 
for  these,  who  were  the  nucleus  of  the  race  of  Israel,  perfect 
insight,  or  even  perfect  candour  and  truthfulness ;  their  principles 
had  the  crudity  of  a  barbarous  age ;  and  when  they  acquired 
power,  they  were  guilty  of  persecuting  acts  which  are  to  be 
regretted.  But  their  aim  was  great,  and  seriously  pursued ;  they 
had  the  conception  of  a  righteous  Power  beyond  the  range  of 
human  sense,  to  whom  our  obedience  is  due  ;  they  strove  to  bring 
their  fellow-countrymen,  and  indeed  all  nations,  to  the  cognisance 
of  this  Power.  While  acknowledging  their  faults,  we  must  not 
ignore  the  debt  we  owe  them. 

Outside  the  circle  of  these  ardent  souls,  the  people  of  Judah 
in  the  reign  of  Josiah  were  imbued  with  a  religion  of  varying 
strictness  or  laxity.  They  had  never  ceased  to  regard  Jehovah  as 
the  national  God  of  Israel;  but  most  of  them  thought  that,  if 
Jehovah  failed  them,  they  might  as  well  have  a  second  string  to 
their  bow  in  Baal,  or  Moloch,  or  the  Sun-god.  To  the  pure  wor- 
shippers of  Jehovah,  to  the  believers  in  a  righteous  God,  to  the 
followers  of  the  Mosaic  tradition  (which  came  from  Abraham), 
this  polytheism  was  abhorrent ;  but  how  were  they  to  overcome 
it?  The  greatest  single  piece  of  evidence  which  they  had,  to 
prove  the  power  and  love  of  God,  lay  in  the  deliverance  of  Israel, 
from  the  Egj^tian  bondage ;   and  to  the  exhibition  of  this  event, 


296         THE    HEAVENLY   IDEAL   IN   CONFLICT:        [oh. 

in  words  that  might  pierce  and  convince,  many  of  them  now 
devoted  all  their  strength. 

In  the  reign  of  Hezekiah,  the  people  of  Judah  had  not  been 
BO  steeped  in  the  practices  of  the  surrounding  nations  as  to  give 
an  acute  stringency  to  the  problem,  how  pure  religion  was  to  be 
recommended  and  enforced.  But  the  reign  of  Manasseh  had 
made  it  possible  that  the  traditions  of  Abraham  and  Moses  would 
absolutely  die  a'way,  choked  by  the  congeries  of  surrounding 
superstitions;  and  many  deeply  religious  persons  among  the 
people  of  Judah,  when  the  reign  of  Josiah  gave  them  an  opportunity 
of  expressing  themselves,  felt  the  keenest  stimulus  towards 
giving  such  an  account  of  the  miracles  of  the  Exodus  and  of 
Mount  Sinai  as  should  never  be  forgotten  by  God's  chosen  people. 
That  the  deliverance  of  Israel  from  Egypt  had  been  achieved  by 
miracles  was  not  in  that  age  denied  or  disputed ;  and  it  was 
inevitable  that  when  the  strong  attempt  was  made,  in  the  reign 
of  Josiah,  to  bring  back  the  people  of  Judah  from  idolatry  and 
polytheism  to  the  worship  of  Jehovah  as  the  single  unique  Deity, 
great  stress  should  be  laid  on  these  miracles. 

I  must  relate  immediately  the  attempt  which  was  made  on 
these  lines ;  but  meanwhile  let  it  not  be  forgotten  that  a  nobler 
argument  than  that  of  miracles  was,  even  in  that  age,  being 
offered  to  the  people  of  Judah  for  the  purpose  of  convincing  and 
confirming  them  in  the  pure  truth  of  religion.  When  the  prophet 
Jeremiah  sought  to  bring  back  his  fellow-countrymen  to  the  pure 
worship  of  God,  he  did  indeed  refer  to  the  history  of  the  Exodus ; 
and  it  is  likely  that  he  believed  in  the  miracles  of  the  Exodus ; 
but  it  is  not  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  miracles  that  he  makes 
his  appeal.     This  is  what  he  writes  (Jeremiah  ii.  4-7) : 

Hear  ye  the  word  of  Jehovah,  O  house  of  Jacob,  and  all  the  families 
of  the  house  of  Israel :  thus  saith  Jehovah,  What  unrighteousness  have 
your  fathers  found  in  me,  that  they  are  gone  far  from  me,  and  have  walked 
after  vanity,  and  are  become  vain  ?  Neither  said  they.  Where  is  Jehovah 
that  brought  us  up  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt;  that  led  us  through  the 
wilderness,  through  a  land  of  deserts  and  of  pits,  through  a  land  of  drought 
and  of  the  sliadow  of  death,  through  a  land  that  none  passed  through, 
and  where  no  man  dwelt?  And  I  brought  you  into  a  plentiful  land,  to 
eat  tlie  fruit  thereof  and  the  goodness  thereof;  but  when  ye  entered,  ye 
defiled  my  land,  and  made  mine  heritage  an  abomination. 

It  will  be  seen  that,  even  if  Jeremiah  believed  in  the  miracles, 
it  is  not  the  miracles  as  such  that  he  trusts  in ;  it  is  the  love  and 
goodness  of  (iod  in  which  he  trusts ;  this  he  felt  as  communicated 
to  his  own  heart,  and  he  urges  others  so  to  act  that  they  may 


XII]  JEREMIAH    AND    EZEKIEL  297 

feel  it  in  their  hearts.  But  this  immediate  intercourse  with 
God,  which  belonged  to  the  prophets  of  Israel,  did  not  belong  to 
the  greater  number  of  pious  Israelites;  it  did  not  belong  to 
Hilkiah  the  high  priest,  or  Shaphan  the  scribe ;  and  these  adopted 
another  method  to  bring  about  the  reform  they  desired.  How 
far  Jeremiah  sanctioned  their  proceedings  we  do  not  know ;  but 
his  method  was  intrinsically  different  from  theirs.  Let  me  quote 
the  narrative  which  wiU  show  how  the  priest  and  the  statesman 
acted  in  furtherance  of  their  scheme  of  reform ;  it  wiU  be  found 
in  2  Kings  xxii. : 

And  it  came  to  pass  in  the  eighteenth  year  of  king  Josiah,  that  the 
king  sent  Shaphan  the  son  of  AzaUah,  the  son  of  Meshullam,  the  scribe, 
to  the  house  of  Jehovah,  saying,  Go  up  to  Hilkiah  the  high  priest,  that  he 
may  sum  the  money  which  is  brought  into  the  house  of  Jehovah,  which 
the  keepers  of  the  door  have  gathered  of  the  people : . . .  And  Hilkiah  the 
high  priest  said  unto  Shaphan  the  scribe,  I  have  found  the  book  of  the  law 
in  the  house  of  Jehovah.  And  Hilkiah  delivered  the  book  to  Shaphan, 
and  he  read  it.  And  Shaphan  the  scribe  came  to  the  king,  and  brought 
the  king  word  again,  and  said.  Thy  servants  have  emptied  out  the  money 
that  was  found  in  the  house,  and  have  delivered  it  into  the  hand  of  the 
workmen  that  have  the  oversight  of  the  house  of  Jehovah.  And  Shaphan 
the  scribe  told  the  king,  saying,  Hilkiah  the  priest  hath  delivered  me  a  book. 
And  Shaphan  read  it  before  the  king.  And  it  came  to  pass,  when  the  king 
had  heard  the  words  of  the  book  of  the  law,  that  he  rent  his  clothes.  And 
the  king  commanded  Hilkiah  the  priest,  and  Ahikam  the  son  of  Shaphan, 
and  Achbor  the  son  of  Micaiah,  and  Shaphan  the  scribe,  and  Asaiah  the 
king's  servant  saying,  Go  ye,  inquire  of  Jehovah  for  me,  and  for  the 
people,  and  for  all  Judah,  concerning  the  words  of  this  book  that  is  found : 
for  great  is  the  wrath  of  Jehovah  that  is  kindled  against  us,  because  our 
fathers  have  not  hearkened  unto  the  words  of  this  book,  to  do  according 
unto  all  that  which  is  enjoined  us. 

In  the  ninth  chapter  of  this  work  I  have  argued,  as  others 
have  argued  before  me,  that  the  book  thus  found  in  the  temple 
was  not  indeed  the  actual  book  of  Deuteronomy  as  we  have  it  now, 
but  the  first  sketch  of  that  book ;  mainly  on  the  ground  that  the 
book  of  Deuteronomy  stringently  commands  that  centralisation 
of  sacrificial  worship,  which  king  Josiah  proceeded  dutifully  to 
enforce,  and  which  therefore  must  have  been  contained  in  the 
book  which  Hilkiah  found  in  the  temple.  No  other  book  of 
the  Pentateuch  could  have  been  the  origin  of  this  rigid  enforce- 
ment ;  for  though  Leviticus  xvii.  1-9,  is  in  the  same  direction, 
it  is  not  the  same  command.  If  then  the  first  sketch  of  the  book 
of  Deuteronomy  was  the  book  thus  found  in  the  temple,  can  we 
help  adding  that  it  was  a  book  which  had  been  composed  not  so 
long  before  the  date  of  its  finding  ?     No  claim  is  made  in  the  book 


298         THE    HEAVENLY   IDEAL    IN   CONFLICT:        [oh. 

of  Kings  that  it  had  ever  been  known  before.  It  was  found, 
but  we  are  not  told  that  it  had  been  lost ;  yet  if  written  by  Moses, 
or  if  it  were  a  transcript  of  what  was  written  by  Moses,  it  must 
have  been  lost  before  it  was  found.  Could  such  a  loss  take  place, 
and  not  the  faintest  mention  of  it  occur  in  the  history  ? 

But  I  must  not  repeat  arguments  which  have  already  been 
given  with  some  fullness  in  the  ninth  chapter  of  the  present  work. 
It  will  be  sufficient  here  to  state  the  conclusion  there  reached: 
That  the  ardent  worshippers  of  Jehovah,  the  ardent  inheritors 
of  the  religious  tradition  of  Abraham  and  Moses,  after  having 
been  thrust  down  and  overpowered  in  the  half-heathen  reign  of 
Manasseh,  gathered  spirit  and  determination  in  the  reign  of 
Manasseh's  grandson  Josiah ;  and  the  most  powerful  of  their 
weapons  was  the  composition  of  a  book,  the  first  sketch  of  our 
book  of  Deuteronomy ;  a  book  truly  powerful ;  sincerely  written 
then,  though  our  more  enlightened  conscience  would  not  permit 
us  to  write  a  similar  work  now. 

But  now  let  me  continue  my  last  quotation,  so  as  to  show 
the  precise  result  of  the  finding  of  the  book.  It  will  be  remembered 
that  king  Josiah  had  commanded  Hilkiah  the  high  priest  and  his 
friends  to  "inquire"  of  Jehovah,  as  to  what,  in  view  of  the  dis- 
covery of  the  sacred  book,  they  should  think  and  do. 

So  Hilkiah  the  priest,  and  Ahikam,  and  Achbor,  and  Shaphan,  and 
Asaiah,  went  vinto  Huldah  the  prophetess,  the  wife  of  Shallum  the  son  of 
Tikvah,  the  son  of  Harhas,  keeper  of  the  wardrobe;  (now  she  dwelt  in 
Jerusalem  in  the  second  quarter ; )  and  they  communed  with  her.  And  she 
said  unto  them,  This  saith  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Israel :  Tell  ye  the  man  that 
sent  you  unto  me,  Thus  saith  Jehovah,  Behold,  I  will  bring  evil  upon  this 
place,  and  upon  the  inhabitants  thereof,  even  all  the  words  of  the  book 
which  the  king  of  Judah  hath  read:  because  they  have  forsaken  me,  and 
have  biu^ned  incense  unto  other  gods,  that  they  might  provoke  me  to  anger 
with  all  the  work  of  their  hands;  therefore  my  wrath  shall  be  kindled 
against  this  place,  and  it  shall  not  be  quenched.  But  unto  the  king  of 
Judah,  who  sent  you  to  inquire  of  Jehovah,  thus  shall  ye  say  to  liim.  Thus 
saith  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Israel :  As  touching  the  words  which  thou  hast 
hoard,  because  thine  heart  was  tender,  and  thou  didst  humble  thyself 
before  Jehovah,  when  thou  heardest  what  I  spake  against  this  place,  and 
against  the  inhabitants  thereof,  that  they  should  become  a  desolation  and 
a  curse,  and  hast  rent  thy  clothes,  and  wept  before  me ;  I  also  have  heard 
thee,  saith  Jehovah.  Therefore,  behold,  I  will  gather  thee  to  thy  fathers, 
and  thou  shalt  be  gathered  to  thy  grave  in  peace,  neither  shall  thine  eyes 
see  all  the  evil  which  I  will  bring  upon  this  place.  And  they  brought  the 
king  word  again. 

The  narrative  goes  on  to  tell  how  Josiah,  after  hearing  the 
message   of   the   prophetess   Huldah,   summoned   all   the   elders 


XII]  JEREMIAH    AND    EZEKIEL  299 

throughout  Judah  and  Jerusalem  to  a  great  conference  in  the 
temple;  and  with  the  elders  came  the  prophets  and  "all  the 
people,"  we  are  told ;  and  then  standing  before  them,  he  himself 
read  to  them  the  whole  book  just  found,  now  called  "the  book  of 
the  covenant";  and  after  reading  it  made  a  solemn  vow  (a 
"covenant,"  it  is  called)  to  obey  the  words  of  that  book ;  and  the 
people  gave  their  consent  and  adhesion  to  his  vow.  The  consent 
of  the  people  proved  far  from  immutable ;  but  Josiah  himself 
was  firm  in  his  resolve,  and  vigorous  in  his  action.  He  sent  and 
destroyed  all  the  "high  places,"  or  in  other  words  all  the  shrines, 
throughout  Judaea  and  Samaria,  whether  those  dedicated  to 
Jehovah,  or  those  dedicated  to  Baal  or  other  deities ;  the  temple 
of  Jehovah  at  Jerusalem  being  alone  permitted  to  stand,  the 
single  and  luiique  shrine  of  the  only  true  God,  Out  of  the  temple 
at  Jerusalem  itself  he  took  every  image,  every  vessel,  that  had 
been  used  for  worship  other  than  the  worship  of  Jehovah ;  all 
such  images  and  vessels  he  destroyed  utterly.  As  regards  the 
priests  who  had  ministered  at  the  altars  which  he  destroyed,  he 
drew  a  distinction ;  he  slew  the  priests  who  had  been  engaged  in 
false  and  idolatrous  worship,  but  spared,  and  did  not  in  any  way 
punish,  those  who  had  been  engaged  in  the  worship  of  Jehovah ; 
though  sacrificial  worship  was  for  the  future  forbidden  in  all  the 
country  shrines  equally. 

Such,  as  it  is  recorded  for  us,  was  the  reform  of  religion  carried 
out  by  king  Josiah ;  and  a  very  drastic  reform  it  was ;  nor  must 
we  defend  every  part  of  it.  Circumstances  yet  to  be  narrated 
made  it  short  lived,  and  the  book  which  was  the  immediate  cause 
of  it,  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  proved  a  more  important  influence 
upon  mankind  in  after  generations  than  anything  which  king 
Josiah  did  personally. 

For  now  we  have,  in  its  first  beginning,  that  long-lived  and 
powerful  agency,  the  religion  of  the  book !  Never  before,  in  the 
history  of  mankind,  had  the  written  word  so  vast  and  detailed 
an  influence  as  it  now  began  to  have  over  the  minds  of  Israelites, 
and  through  them  on  Christians  and  Mohammedans  afterwards. 
In  the  reign  of  Josiah  the  power  of  the  book  was  but  in  its  infancy ; 
but  it  is  a  reality ;  the  written  word  is  beginning  to  rival  the  spoken 
word ;  and  it  is  a  rivalry  which  extends  to  the  thoughts  of  men 
as  well  as  to  their  actions.  The  book  of  Deuteronomy  is  the  first 
book  of  all  books  that  were  ever  written  in  which  this  all-com- 
prehensive claim  to  rule  men  was  advanced ;  and  this  being  so, 
it  will  be  well  to  give  some  further  account  of  its  moral  bearings 


300         THE    HEAVENLY    IDEAL    IN   CONFLICT:        [oh. 

than  is  involved  in  what  is  written  above.  It  is  permissible  to 
treat  it  as  a  whole ;  though  in  its  actual  form  a  good  deal  is  later 
than  the  reign  of  Josiah,  and  some  of  it  is  earlier  (but  gathered 
into  the  whole,  of  course,  at  a  later  time). 

The  book  of  Deuteronomy  is,  as  I  have  said,  most  earnest; 
and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  imagination  entered  largely  into  the 
composition  of  many  parts  of  it,  it  comes  from  the  heart.  More 
than  that;  it  is  a  book  in  which  the  duties  of  humanity  and 
justice  are  set  forth  in  memorable  terms.  It  will  be  well  to  quote 
a  few  passages  to  show  this.  The  duty  of  impartial  judgment 
between  man  and  man  is  set  forth  as  follows : 

Judges  and  officers  shalt  thou  make  thee  in  all  thy  gates,  which 
Jehovah  thy  God  giveth  thee,  according  to  thy  tribes:  and  they  shall 
judge  the  people  with  righteous  judgment.  Thou  shalt  not  wrest  judgment ; 
thou  shalt  not  respect  persons :  neither  shalt  thou  take  a  gift ;  for  a  gift 
doth  blind  the  eyes  of  the  wise,  and  pervert  the  words  of  the  righteoxis. 
That  which  is  altogether  just  shalt  thou  follow,  that  thou  mayest  live, 
and  inherit  the  land  which  Jehovah  thy  God  giveth  thee.  Deut.  xvi. 
18-20. 

The  duty  of  kindness  towards  aliens  is  inculcated,  sometimes 
very  impressively,  as  for  instance  in  the  tenth  chapter,  verse  19 : 

Love  ye  therefore  the  stranger:  for  ye  were  strangers  in  the  land  of 
Egypt. 

And  so  again  in  chapter  xxiv.  14,  15,  with  reference  to  the 
payment  of  hired  servants: 

Thou  shalt  not  oppress  an  hired  servant  that  is  poor  and  needy, 
whether  he  be  of  thy  brethren,  or  of  thy  strangers  that  are  in  thy  land 
within  thy  gates:  in  his  day  shalt  thou  give  him  his  hire,  neither  shall  the 
sun  go  down  upon  it ;  for  he  is  poor,  and  setteth  his  heart  upon  it ;  lest  he 
cry  against  thee  unto  Jehovah,  and  it  be  sin  unto  thee. 

The  verse  which  immediately  follows  the  foregoing  is  one  that 
may  have  belonged  to  a  more  ancient  code  ;  for  the  Bible  represents 
a  saying  to  the  same  effect  as  having  influenced  Amaziah,  some  two 
centuries  before  Josiah : 

The  fathers  shall  not  be  put  to  death  for  the  children,  neither  shall 
the  children  be  put  to  death  for  the  fathers ;  every  man  shall  be  put  to 
death  for  his  own  sin. 

Such  sayings  are  memorable ;  and  more  might  be  quoted. 
Yet  in  reading  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  we  have  continually  to 
change  from  admiration  to  regret;  for,  with  all  its  fervour  and 
dignity,  it  represents  a  severer  and  more  painful  view  of  God's 
judgments  than  any  other  book  of  the  Old  Testament  contains ; 
and  this  was  in  no  slight  degree  the  cause  of  the  narrowness  of 


xn]  JEREMIAH   AND    EZEKIEL  301 

the  later  Judaism,  from  Ezra  onwards.  For  while  the  rehgion  of 
the  book,  if  embraced  without  freedom  to  criticise,  tends  of  itself 
to  narrowness,  this  tendency  is  greatly  increased  when  the  punish- 
ments for  disobedience  or  incredulity  are  made  too  severe.  It  is 
not  disparaging  Deuteronomy  very  much  to  say  that  it  is  not  equal 
in  prophetic  power  to  the  utterances  of  Isaiah ;  but  it  is  instructive 
to  compare  the  way  in  which  the  two  books  speak  of  the  fear  of 
God.  The  passage  of  Isaiah  in  which  this  fear  is  inculcated  as 
a  right  and  noble  quality  is  from  the  eleventh  chapter,  a  part  of 
which  I  quoted  in  treating  of  Isaiah ;  but  a  few  verses  may  well 
be  quoted  again: 

And  there  shall  come  forth  a  shoot  out  of  the  stock  of  Jesse,  and  a 
branch  out  of  his  roots  shall  bear  f rtiit :  and  the  spirit  of  Jehovah  shall 
rest  upon  him,  the  spirit  of  wisdom  and  understanding,  the  spirit  of  counsel 
and  might,  the  spirit  of  knowledge  and  of  the  fear  of  Jehovah;  and  his 
delight  shall  be  in  the  fear  of  Jehovah .... 

Now  take  in  contrast  with  this  the  following  passage  from  the 
twenty-eighth  chapter  of  Deuteronomy,  in  which  hypothetical 
blessings  and  hypothetical  cursings,  correspondent  to  the  good 
or  bad  actions  of  the  Israelites  of  the  future,  are  set  down  (but 
the  cursings  exceed  the  blessings  in  length  many  times  over) ; 
among  the  blessings  the  fear  of  God  is  not  mentioned,  but  among 
the  cursings  it  enters  in  thus  (verses  58  and  59) : 

If  thou  wilt  not  observe  to  do  all  the  words  of  this  law  that  are  written 
in  this  book,  that  thou  mayest  fear  this  glorious  and  fearful  name,  Jehovah 
thy  God ;  then  Jehovah  will  make  thy  plagues  wonderful,  and  the  plagues 
of  thy  seed,  even  great  plagues,  and  of  long  continuance,  and  sore  sicknesses, 
and  of  long  continuance. 

How  tender  is  the  fear  of  God  in  Isaiah,  how  terrible  in  Deutero- 
nomy! No  doubt  the  people  of  Judah  had  gone  very  wrong 
in  the  reigns  of  Manasseh  and  Amon,  and  something  more  of 
severity  might  be  expected  from  the  writer  of  Deuteronomy,  hving 
after  that  great  apostasy,  than  from  Isaiah,  who  lived  when  the 
worship  of  foreign  deities  was  comparatively  moderate  ;  but  this  is 
not  enough  to  account  for  the  difference  between  the  two  passages. 
There  is  something  external  and  mechanical  in  the  spirit  which 
the  writer  of  Deuteronomy  is  inculcating ;  it  is  not  the  noble  fear 
of  wrong-doing,  but  the  less  noble  fear  of  the  pains  which  may  be 
expected  to  result  from  wrong-doing,  which  he  is  making  the 
instrument  of  his  appeal  to  his  own  nation.  Not  that  the  fear 
of  painful  results  is  in  itself  ignoble ;  but  it  becomes  ignoble,  if 
not  subordinated  to  the  fear  of  wrong-doing  in  itself ;  for  it  is  by 


302         THE    HEAVENLY    IDEAL   IN    CONFLICT:        [ch. 

the  fear  of  wrong-doing,  not  by  the  fear  of  punishment,  that  the 
human  spirit  grows  vitally.  Now  in  the  whole  of  the  twenty- 
eighth  chapter  of  Deuteronomy,  with  its  long  array  of  blessings 
and  cursings,  no  touch  of  the  nobler  fear  is  inculcated.  I  will 
not  say  that  it  is  absent  from  the  whole  book  of  Deuteronomy,  for 
the  relations  between  God  and  man  are  assumed  to  be  intimate 
and  loving  in  any  right  order  of  things,  and  the  noble  fear  of  God 
cannot  be  absent  from  such  a  temper ;  the  twenty -eighth  chapter 
is  specifically  faulty  in  a  degree  in  which  the  others  are  not  so. 
But  all  through  the  book,  the  thought  of  external  penalties 
inflicted  by  God  directly,  or  commanded  by  God  as  a  duty  to  be 
carried  out  by  his  faithful  servants  upon  impious  men,  is  very 
prominent  indeed ;  and  the  fear  of  such  penalties  is  earthly,  not 
spiritual.  There  is  an  element  of  hardness  in  Deuteronomy,  which 
is  rarely  found  in  the  prophetical  writings  of  the  Old  Testament ; 
and  this  was  not  without  injurious  effects  in  after  ages. 

In  speaking  of  Deuteronomy  as  the  first  instance,  and  indeed 
the  origin,  of  the  "religion  of  the  book,"  I  do  not  forget  that  for 
some  centuries  before  the  reign  of  king  Josiah  there  had  been 
written  narratives,  more  or  less  detailed,  of  the  rise  and  growth 
of  the  people  of  Israel,  and  of  the  divine  element  pervading  their 
history,  as  the  divine  element  was  then  understood.  But  none 
of  these  narratives  had  the  insistent  force  which  compels  obedience. 
Up  to  the  reign  of  Josiah,  the  religion  of  Israel,  even  in  its  most 
orthodox  form,  was  fluid  and  capable  of  change.  We  read  in 
Numbers  xxvii.  21,  a  divine  command  that  Joshua,  when  in  need 
of  guidance,  should  receive  it  from  the  high  priest,  who  should 
consult  God  by  means  of  the  Urim  and  Thummim  (by  which 
name  the  jewels  on  the  breastplate  of  the  high  priest  were  desig- 
nated). It  is  evidently  intended  that  this  was  to  be  the  method  by 
which  the  chiefs  of  the  Israelites  should  always  obtain  the  divine 
counsel ;  and  no  doubt  the  practice  was  an  ancient  one,  and  was 
really  resorted  to  by  David.  Yet  king  Josiah,  and  the  high  priest 
Hilkiah,  quite  ignore  it ;  and,  being  in  need  of  guidance,  consult 
the  prophetess  Huldah.  This  was  a  more  enlightened  procedure 
than  consulting  the  Urim  and  Thummim ;  but  it  was  a  procedure 
that  ignored  the  ancient  practice.  If  such  high  authorities  as 
king  Josiah  and  the  high  priest  Hilkiah  could  to  this  extent  ignore 
tradition  (and  it  matters  little  whether  the  tradition  had  been 
actually  written  down  or  not),  it  is  clear  that  the  rehgion  of  Israel 
was  not,  up  to  the  reign  of  Josiah,  an  absolutely  fixed  set  of 
ordinances.     But  Deuteronomy,  with  its  stern  commands,  tended 


xn]  JEREMIAH    AND    EZEKIEL  303 

to  fix  ceremonial  religion;  and  authority  in  the  formal  sense 
began  to  assume  a  definiteness  which  it  had  not  before. 

Yet  this  tendency  towards  fixity,  this  formaUsing  of  authority 
among  reHgious  Israelites,  almost  immediately  received  a  serious 
check,  and  appeared  likely  to  be  cut  short  almost  as  soon  as  it 
began.  The  gallant  king  Josiah,  whom  (in  spite  of  his  persecuting 
tendencies)  we  must  honour  for  his  piety  and  courage,  and  also 
according  to  the  testimony  of  Jeremiah  for  his  justice,  was  slain 
after  a  reign  of  thirty-one  years  in  a  hopeless  attempt  to  with- 
stand Pharaoh-necoh  king  of  Egypt,  who  was  marching  by  the 
usual  route  through  the  north  of  Palestine  to  attack  the  Assyrians. 
For  the  moment,  the  whole  Judaean  monarchy  fell  under  the  power 
of  Egypt.  The  power  of  Egypt  was  short  lived ;  but  Josiah  had 
gone ;  and  there  was  no  real  recovery  for  his  famUy  or  his  dynasty. 
To  explain  what  was  happening,  it  is  necessary  to  glance  beyond 
the  bounds  of  the  land  of  Israel. 

The  great  kingdom  of  Assyria,  the  kingdom  whose  capital 
was  Nineveh,  which  had  subjugated  Syria,  northern  Israel,  and 
Babylon,  and  under  Sennacherib  had  desolated  Judah,  was  now 
tottering  to  its  fall.  A  terrible,  an  astonishing  event !  How 
came  it  about?  The  most  recent  discoveries  in  the  cuneiform 
inscriptions  show  that  Nineveh  was  destroyed  by  one  of  those 
formidable  savage  hordes,  which  have  so  often  issued  from  central 
Asia  and  have  destroyed  the  products  of  civihsation.  The  Greeks 
called  them  Scythians ;  but  the  inscription  of  Nabonidus  through 
which  we  know  of  this  particular  horde  calls  them  the  Manda. 
Nabonidus  was  the  last  king  of  Babylon,  and  from  his  inscription 
it  appears  that  the  Babylonians  rejoiced  at  the  fall  of  Nineveh, 
and  so  far  were  in  sympathy  with  the  Manda ;  but  whether  they 
actively  helped  the  Manda  is  uncertain,  (Herodotus  tells  us  that 
Nineveh  was  taken  by  the  Medes ;  but  he  also  informs  us  of  the 
presence  of  a  great  Scythian  army  in  Media  and  other  parts  of 
Asia  at  that  time ;  and  whatever  precisely  may  have  happened, 
it  seems  probable  that  the  actual  destruction  of  Nineveh  was 
carried  out  by  the  Scythians,  i.e.  the  Manda.) 

It  must  strike  one  with  awe  that  the  single  city  on  which  this 
barbarian  invasion  struck  with  overwhelming  force,  was  the  city 
which,  only  a  few  years  before,  had  been  supreme  over  all  western 
Asia;  which  had  subjugated  Babylon  and  Egypt;  which  had 
swept  away  a  great  part  of  the  ten  tribes  from  northern  Palestine, 
and  many  of  the  people  of  Judah  as  well ;  which  had  transplanted, 
other  communities  also,   more  than  we  now  know ;     which  in 


804        THE    HEAVENLY    IDEAL    IN   CONFLICT:        [ch. 

splendour  of  external  appearance  was  surpassed  by  few  cities  of 
the  ancient  world,  as  its  remains  now  testify.  Such  was  Nineveh ; 
yet  despite  all  its  splendour  and  pride,  not  a  single  sigh  or  lament 
has  reached  us  to  show  how  the  inhabitants  of  it  felt  its  fall.  We 
cannot  but  contrast  with  this  the  poignant  laments  which,  when 
Jerusalem  was  destroyed,  only  a  few  years  later,  the  exiled 
inhabitants  of  that  city  poured  forth,  and  which  we  read  to-day 
in  our  Bibles.  Were  not  the  Jews  a  nobler  people  than  the 
Assyrians,  because  they  could  thus  feel  and  utter  their  sorrows  ? 

But  at  the  moment  when  Pharaoh -necoh  set  out,  thinking  to 
seize  some  portion  of  the  falling  realm  of  Assyria,  the  people  of 
Judah  were  by  no  means  lamenting.  The  tone  of  the  prophet 
Nahum,  whose  three  chapters  are  entirely  devoted  to  portraying 
the  imminent  fall  of  Nineveh,  is  the  tone  of  unalloyed  triumph. 
In  his  eyes,  the  fall  of  Nineveh  is  the  peace  of  Judah. 

"Jehovah  hath  given  commandment  concerning  thee,"  he  cries  out  to 
Nineveh,  "  that  no  more  of  thy  name  be  sown ;  out  of  the  house  of  thy 
gods  will  I  cut  off  the  graven  image  and  the  molten  image;  I  will  make 
thy  grave ;  for  thou  art  vile.  Behold,  upon  the  mountains  the  feet  of 
him  that  bringeth  good  tidings,  that  publisheth  peace !  Keep  thy  feasts, 
O  Judah,  perform  thy  vows :  for  the  wicked  one  shall  no  more  pass  through 
thee;    he  is  utterly  cut  off."     Nahum  i.  14,  15. 

Alas,  there  were  wicked  ones  still  remaining  in  the  earth,  when 
Nineveh  had  been  cut  off;  as  Judah  was  very  shortly  to  know. 
Another  prophet,  Zephaniah,  with  broader  imagination  and  more 
generous  mind  than  Nahum,  yet  speaks  in  similar  terms  about 
Nineveh : 

"  Jehovah,"  he  writes,  "  will  stretch  out  his  hand  against  the  north,  and 
destroy  Assyria;  and  will  make  Nineveh  a  desolation,  and  dry  like  the 
wilderness.  And  herds  shall  lie  down  in  the  midst  of  her,  all  the  beasts 
of  the  nations:  both  the  pelican  and  the  porcupine  shall  lodge  in  the 
chapiters  thereof :  their  voice  shall  sing  in  the  windows ;  desolation  shall 
be  in  the  tliresholds :  for  he  hath  laid  bare  the  cedar  work.  Tliis  is  the  joyous 
city  that  dwelt  carelessly,  that  said  in  her  heart,  I  am,  and  there  is  none 
else  beside  me :  how  is  she  become  a  desolation,  a  place  for  beasts  to  lie 
down  in!  every  one  that  passeth  by  her  shall  hiss,  and  wag  liis  hand." 
Zephaniah  ii.  1.3-15. 

The  theme  of  Zephaniah,  however,  is  the  purging  of  all  the 
nations ;  out  of  calamities  he  predicts  a  happy  end.  Neither  in 
Nahum  nor  in  Zephaniah  is  there  direct  mention  of  the  wild  hordes 
that  were  then  devastating  western  Asia:  but  it  is  from  the 
knowledge  of  their  presence  and  their  acts  of  savage  destruction 
that  these  prophecies  evidently  proceed. 

One  inference  we  may  draw  from  the  tone  of  these  prophets 


xn]  JEREMIAH    AND    EZEKIEL  305 

of  Judah.  It  is  a  natural  question,  why  Josiah  went  out,  certainly 
in  no  prudent  fashion,  to  oppose  Pharaoh-necoh  in  his  march 
against  Assyria,  Some  have  thought  that  he  went  as  the  vassal 
of  Assyria,  to  oppose  the  enemy  of  Assyria.  But  if  Josiah  had 
acted  from  this  motive,  it  is  clear  that  he  could  have  had  neither 
Nahum  nor  Zephaniah  for  his  counsellor ;  and  we  cannot  doubt 
that  Nahum  and  Zephaniah  represented  the  general  sentiments  of 
the  people  of  Judah.  Hence  we  must  think  that  Josiah  opposed 
Pharaoh-necoh  because  he  considered  that  the  Egyptian  king  was 
violating  the  soil  of  Palestine ;  and  the  twentieth  chapter  of 
Deuteronomy,  with  its  exhortations  to  courage,  was  very  likely  to 
stimulate  him  towards  such  resistance.  He  fell  not  unworthily; 
but  the  premisses  on  which  he  had  acted  were  imperfect ;  and  the 
kingdom  of  Judah  suffered  thereby. 

Even  if  Josiah  had  been  more  prudent,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted 
that  the  kingdom  of  Judah  would  have  been  obliged  to  submit 
to  being  the  vassal,  in  some  degree,  of  either  Egypt  or  Babylon 
(Nineveh  having  perished,  and  the  barbarian  invasion  having 
come  to  an  end,  in  what  precise  manner  we  know  not).  But 
Josiah's  defeat  made  things  much  worse  for  his  country.  Pharaoh- 
necoh  began  by  insulting  and  despoiling  the  land  of  Judah ;  and 
when  Pharaoh-necoh,  a  year  or  two  later,  was  defeated  by  Nebu- 
chadnezzar in  the  battle  of  Carchemish,  then  that  great  king 
claimed  all  the  land  of  Israel  as  his  own  by  right  of  conquest,  and 
it  is  plain  that  Judah  and  Jerusalem  suffered  afresh,  though  we 
have  no  exact  account  of  the  first  proceedings  of  Nebuchadnezzar 
against  the  hapless  country.  Out  of  all  the  competitors  who 
strove  for  the  imperial  inheritance  of  Nineveh,  Babylon  had  come 
out  victorious ;  and  the  catastrophe  of  Jerusalem  was  drawing  near. 

We  can  hardly  be  surprised  that,  after  the  fall  of  Josiah,  the 
land  of  Judah  lapsed  back  into  polytheism  and  idolatry.  The 
religion  of  which  Josiah  had  been  so  ardent  a  champion  had  not 
been  justified  by  visible  success  ;  and  idols  and  idol- worship  began 
to  revive  in  Jerusalem,  even  in  the  temple  itself.  Not  again  was 
the  royal  hand  held  out  to  purge  Jerusalem  from  such  iniquities ; 
in  aU  matters,  whether  of  religion,  or  of  morality,  or  of  justice, 
a  recklessness  had  fallen  upon  the  people  of  Judah.  Only  a  few 
prophets,  and  a  remnant  of  faithful  men,  kept  to  the  guiding 
faith  of  the  ancient  leaders  of  Israel,  and  were  not  dismayed. 
The  prophet  Habakkuk  wrote  before  things  had  arrived  at  their 
worst ;  he  foresees  the  attack  of  the  Chaldeans ;  but  he  is  not 
dismayed  as  to  the  final  issue.     He  utters  that  memorable  saying,  ■ 

M.  D.  A.  20 


306         THE    HEAVENLY   IDEAL   IN   CONFLICT:        [oh. 

"The  just  shall  live  by  his  faith."  With  Jeremiah  we  enter  upon 
the  darkest  time.  Henceforth,  for  at  least  a  century,  pure  religion 
is  absolutely  unprotected  by  secular  force ;  the  prophets  are  the 
sole  upholders  of  it;  and  their  sole  weapon  was  the  word  of 
preaching,  the  word  of  God.  That  pure  religion  should  have 
issued  victorious  out  of  such  a  conflict  is  one  of  the  most  memor- 
able facts  in  human  history. 

Three  prophets  are  the  representatives  to  us  of  this  conflict ; 
Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  and  the  great  unnamed  prophet  whose  pro- 
phecies are  reckoned  in  our  Bibles  as  the  last  twenty-seven 
chapters  of  Isaiah.  No  doubt  these  three  did  not  stand  absolutely 
alone  (for  instance,  Jeremiah  had  a  follower,  more  unfortunate 
even  than  himself,  that  Uriah  whose  brief  story  is  told  in  the  book 
of  Jeremiah,  xxvi.  20-23) ;  but  to  us  they  stand  alone ;  and  if 
ever  three  men  did  a  great  work,  it  was  they.  They  were  separated 
in  time ;  and  from  this  cause,  and  also  from  their  natural  differences 
of  character,  the  impression  which  they  make  upon  us  is  very 
different.  But  the  underlying  thought  of  all  three  is  the  same ; 
and  it  is  that  which  Isaiah  first  expounded  as  the  secret  of  Grod's 
dealings  with  Israel ;  that  some  out  of  Israel  would  shine  forth 
to  posterity  as  the  true  people  of  God,  and  would  rule  the  world 
from  Zion,  the  sacred  city ;  while  others,  deaf  and  blind  to  divine 
truth,  would  fall  into  oblivion  and  disregard.  In  Isaiah's  time 
the  actual  exile  was  not  foreseen,  except  as  regards  a  part  of  the 
nation ;  hence  he  emphasises  the  return  of  the  faithful  ones  to 
Grod,  not  their  return  to  their  own  land.  But  the  three  later 
prophets  of  whom  I  am  now  speaking  did  emphasise  in  their 
teaching  the  return  from  actual  exile ;  this  was  the  first  form  of 
the  ideal  to  which  they  looked  in  the  future. 

Yet  the  primary  message  of  both  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  to  the 
people  of  Judah  is,  not  that  there  shall  be  a  return  from  captivity, 
but  that  there  shall  be  a  captivity.  It  may  seem  a  matter  of  course, 
that  a  return  from  captivity  must  be  preceded  by  a  captivity ; 
but  it  is  not  as  a  matter  of  course,  nor  as  a  thing  merely  to  be 
sorrowed  over  and  lamented,  that  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  speak 
of  the  captivity  of  the  entire  people  of  Judah,  which  they  foresee. 
It  is  with  the  full  conviction  that  the  captivity  ought  to  come, 
that  it  is  best  for  it  to  come,  that  they  prophesy  that  it  will  come. 
It  is  not  that  they  do  not  lament  it;  but  they  lament  far  more 
the  unwortliiness  of  the  nation  which  makes  it  inevitable. 

There  is,  indeed,  one  thing  that  may  fairly  excite  our  surprise, 
when  I  speak  of  this  unworthiness  of  the  people  of  Judah.    Why 


xn]  JEREMIAH   AND    EZEKIEL  307 

does  Jeremiah  never  once  refer  to  that  great  reform  of  religion 
by  king  Josiah  which  the  second  book  of  Kings  describes  at  such 
length?  Though  Jeremiah  refers  to  Josiah  himself  with  praise, 
as  being  a  just  and  compassionate  ruler,  he  does  not  once  speak 
of  Josiah's  rehgious  reform.  In  the  following  passage  especially 
(Jeremiah  xxv.  1-7)  he  might  have  been  expected  to   refer  to  it : 

The  word  that  came  to  Jeremiah  concerning  all  the  people  of  Judah 
in  the  fourth  year  of  Jehoiakim  the  son  of  Josiah,  king  of  Judah ;  the  same 
was  the  first  year  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  king  of  Babylon ;  the  which  Jeremiah 
the  prophet  spake  unto  all  the  people  of  Judah,  and  to  all  the  inhabitants 
of  Jerusalem,  saying :  From  the  thirteenth  year  of  Josiah  the  son  of  Amon, 
king  of  Judah,  even  unto  this  day,  these  three  and  twenty  years,  the  word 
of  Jehovah  hath  come  unto  me,  and  I  have  spoken  unto  you,  rising  up 
early  and  speaking ;  but  ye  have  not  hearkened.  And  Jehovah  hath  sent 
unto  you  all  his  servants  the  prophets,  rising  up  early  and  sending  them ; 
but  ye  have  not  hearkened,  nor  inclined  yoiir  ear  to  hear ;  saying,  Return 
ye  now  every  one  from  his  evil  way,  and  from  the  evil  of  yovu*  doings,  and 
dwell  in  the  land  that  Jehovah  hath  given  unto  you  and  to  your  fathers, 
from  of  old  and  even  for  evermore:  and  go  not  after  other  gods  to  serve 
them,  and  to  worship  them,  and  provoke  me  not  to  anger  with  the  work 
of  your  hands ;  and  I  will  do  you  no  hurt.  Yet  ye  have  not  hearkened 
unto  me,  saith  Jehovah ;  that  ye  might  provoke  me  to  anger  with  the  work 
of  your  hands  to  your  own  h;irt. 

It  will  be  observed  that  out  of  the  twenty-three  years  during 
which  Jeremiah  represents  himself  in  the  above  passage  to  have 
been  preaching  to  the  people  of  Judah  that  they  ought  to  repent 
of  their  idolatry  and  polytheism,  no  fewer  than  thirteen  are  the 
precise  period  during  which  (according  to  the  second  book  of 
Kings)  the  religious  reform  instituted  by  Josiah  was  in  force; 
during  which,  we  might  suppose,  idolatry  and  polytheism  had 
ceased  in  Judah.  Why  does  Jeremiah  make  no  mention  of  this 
remarkable  reform?  I  think  we  must  answer  that  the  reform 
was  much  less  deep  than  is  generally  supposed;  and  it  failed, 
because  Josiah  and  his  advisers  had  not  adequately  thought  out 
the  needs  of  those  whom  they  were  endeavouring  to  correct  and 
amend.  If  any  inhabitant  of  the  country  of  Judah,  or  of  Palestine 
(or  it  may  be  added  of  any  country  where  religion  was  operative) 
desired  in  those  days  to  obtain  favour  or  counsel  from  the  deity 
whom  he  worshipped,  he  offered  a  sacrifice  to  that  deity.  When 
Josiah  had  prohibited  all  sacrifices,  except  those  offered  in  the 
temple  at  Jerusalem,  throughout  the  realm  which  he  ruled,  what 
were  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  parts  to  do,  when  they  wished 
to  obtain  the  divine  favour  and  counsel  ?  To  go  up  to  Jerusalem 
and  offer  sacrifice  there,  was  too  serious  a  burden  for  them;   and- 

20—2 


S08        THE    HEAVENLY   IDEAL    IN   CONFLICT:        [oh. 

they  were  not  spiritual  enough  to  do  what  Jeremiah  and  other 
spiritually-minded  prophets  would  have  counselled,  namely  to 
pray  to  God  in  spiritual  trust,  knowing  that  God  does  not  need 
or  require  material  sacrifices.  Their  whole  conceptions  were 
material ;  they  prayed  for  material  benefits ;  to  obtain  those 
material  benefits,  they  offered  material  sacrifices ;  and  they  might 
have  argued  (and  very  likely  did  argue),  "  If  material  sacrifices  are 
of  no  benefit  to  those  who  offer  them,  why  are  material  sacrifices 
offered  up  in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  ?  "  Hence,  though  Josiah 
prohibited  sacrificial  worship  in  the  country  parts  of  his  realm, 
there  was  always  a  tendency  for  it  to  revive  again ;  and  when  it 
revived,  the  deity  worshipped  was  very  likely  not  Jehovah,  and 
was  almost  certain  not  to  be  Jehovah  in  that  sublime  sense  in 
which  the  prophets  understood  the  nature  and  being  of  that 
Eternal  One  from  whom  all  power  and  strength  and  life  sprang 
into  birth. 

That,  I  think,  is  the  consideration  which  explains  what  else 
must  so  much  surprise  us,  the  total  ignoring  by  Jeremiah  of 
Josiah's  great  religious  reform.  In  the  years  after  the  captivity, 
a  means  of  reconciliation  was  found  between  the  religious  needs 
of  individuals  throughout  the  country  and  the  claim  of  Jerusalem 
to  be  single  and  unique  as  a  place  of  sacrificial  worship ;  this  was 
effected  by  the  institution  of  synagogues,  or  places  where  worship 
of  prayer  and  praise  was  offered  without  sacrifices.  But  in  the 
reign  of  Josiah,  the  people  were  not  capable  of  adopting  this 
remedy.  No  doubt  all  through  the  country  there  were  individuals 
who  could  understand  and  sympathise  with  the  lofty  ideal  which 
Jeremiah  held  and  proclaimed,  as  for  instance  in  such  a  passage 
as  the  following : 

Thus  saith  Jehovah,  Let  not  the  wise  man  glory  in  his  wisdom,  neither 
let  the  mighty  man  glory  in  his  might,  let  not  the  rich  man  glory  in  his 
riches :  but  let  him  that  glorieth  glory  in  this,  that  he  understandeth,  and 
knoweth  me,  that  I  am  Jehovah  which  exercise  lovingkindncss,  judgment, 
and  righteousness,  in  the  earth:  for  in  these  tilings  I  delight,  saith  Jehovah. 
Jeremiah  ix.  23,  24. 

But  they  were  few  who  held  these  lofty  principles;  and 
Jeremiah  was  no  doubt  right  in  believing  that  the  people  of  Judah 
could  not  be  purified  without  some  great  overthrow  which  would 
cause  searchings  of  heart  among  them. 

From  the  time  that  Nebuchadnezzar  appeared  on  the  scene 
Jeremiah  began  to  predict  the  captivity  of  the  whole  nation  and 
their  exile  in  Babylon.     He  does  this  in  the  twenty-fifth  chapter 


XII]  JEREMIAH    AND    EZEKIEL  309 

from  which  I  have  akeady  quoted,  and  again  in  the  thirty-sixth 
chapter  (verse  29) :  this  latter  is  the  chapter  in  which  it  is  related 
how  king  Jehoiakim  burned  the  roll  on  which  Jeremiah  had 
written  his  threatenings.  It  would  have  fared  ill  with  the  prophet 
on  that  occasion,  if  Jehoiakim  had  been  able  to  seize  him;  but 
he  was  successfully  concealed.  The  year  in  which  these  two 
chapters  were  written  was  the  year  in  which  Nebuchadnezzar 
first  appears  as  the  overlord  of  Judah  and  Israel.  Three  years 
later  Jehoiakim  rebelled;  and  though  Nebuchadnezzar  was  too 
busy  to  repress  the  rebellion  in  person,  he  incited  the  rival  races 
against  the  kingdom  of  Judah,  among  them  the  Moabites  and 
Ammonites,  who  were  only  too  glad  to  pay  off  their  old  scores 
in  this  way.  The  people  of  Judah  began  to  feel  a  retaliation 
which,  it  must  be  confessed,  was  not  altogether  undeserved. 

Jehoiakim  died  before  Jerusalem  suffered  capture ;  but  this  was 
not  long  delayed.  His  son  Jehoiachin  had  only  been  three  months 
king  when  Nebuchadnezzar  appeared  with  a  force  too  strong  to 
be  resisted ;  and  Jehoiachin  surrendered  to  him.  Then  ensued  the 
first  stage  of  the  captivity  of  Judah;  Jehoiachin  himself,  and 
thousands  of  the  population,  were  carried  away  to  Babylon. 

It  was  the  beginning  of  the  end.  Zedekiah,  the  youngest  son 
of  Josiah  (and  uncle  of  Jehoiachin)  was  next  made  king  of  Judah 
by  Nebuchadnezzar ;  and  ruled  over  what  remained  of  the  people. 
But  he  also  rebelled,  as  Jehoiakim  had  done,  for  what  cause  we 
know  not ;  and  Nebuchadnezzar  came  in  person  with  his  Chaldean 
army,  and  besieged  the  city  in  form,  building  forts  and  mounds 
against  it;  for  Jerusalem  was  by  nature  strong,  and  not  easily 
to  be  taken. 

Never  was  there  a  siege  in  all  history  in  which  the  passions 
and  emotions  of  men  had  so  wide  a  range ;  not  even  the  siege  of 
Athens,  when  the  Peloponnesian  army  and  fleet  lay  round  it. 
Looking  at  the  matter  superficially,  the  case  was  simply  that 
of  a  small  disordered  community,  inhabiting  a  very  strong 
fortified  city,  besieged  by  the  army  of  the  mightiest  power  then 
existing  in  the  world,  and  therefore  certain  to  fall  in  the  end  by 
famine,  if  not  by  assault.  There  was  no  great  military  genius 
among  the  defenders;  Zedekiah  the  king  was  an  amiable  but 
weak  prince,  governed  by  his  nobles. 

But  there  were  those  in  the  city  whose  thoughts  and  feelings 
redeemed  these  commonplace  elements  of  the  situation,  and 
elevated  the  whole  to  a  drama  of  the  highest  interest ;  those  whose 
passionate  affection  was  given  to  the  city  of  Jerusalem  and  to 


310         THE    HEAVENLY    IDEAL   IN   CONFLICT:        [ch. 

the  people  of  Israel ;  those  who,  m  their  sorrow  for  the  miseries 
of  the  present,  had  not  forgotten  the  lofty  ideal  set  before  their 
nation,  and  the  divine  promises  on  which  that  ideal  rested  as  on 
a  sure  fomidation.  Of  these  Jeremiah  was  the  chief.  He  had  no 
delusion  as  to  the  ability  of  his  countrymen  to  resist  the  arms  of 
Nebuchadnezzar;  he  urged  them  to  surrender;  in  particular, 
he  urged  Zedekiah  to  surrender.  If  Zedekiah  had  been  left  to 
himself,  he  might  have  accepted  the  advice ;  but  his  nobles  would 
not  permit  him  to  do  so ;  and  Jeremiah  suffered  greatly  at  their 
hands.  Yet  despair  was  very  far  from  Jeremiah's  heart.  In 
order  to  show  his  good  hope  for  the  future  of  his  people,  he  publicly 
bought  the  field  which  his  cousin  offered  him  for  sale  in  his  native 
village  of  Anathoth,  although  neither  he  nor  his  cousin  were  able 
to  reach  Anathoth,  by  reason  of  the  besieging  army;  and  he 
pointed  the  meaning  of  his  act  by  the  following  prophecy : 

Thus  saith  Jehovah:  Like  as  I  have  brought  all  this  great  evil  upon 
this  people,  so  will  I  bring  upon  them  all  the  good  that  I  have  promised 
them.  And  fields  shall  be  bought  in  this  land,  whereof  ye  say,  It  is  desolate, 
without  man  or  beast ;  it  is  given  into  the  hand  of  the  Chaldeans.  Men 
shall  buy  fields  for  money,  and  subscribe  the  deeds,  and  seal  them,  and 
call  witnesses,  in  the  land  of  Benjamin,  and  in  the  places  about  Jerusalem, 
and  in  the  cities  of  Judah,  and  in  the  cities  of  the  hill  country,  and  in  the 
cities  of  the  lowland,  and  in  the  cities  of  the  South :  for  I  will  cause  their 
captivity  to  return,  saith  Jehovah.     Jeremiah  xxxii.  42-44. 

And  again  with  yet  tenderer  emotion  he  writes : 

Thus  saith  Jehovah  Sabaoth,  the  God  of  Israel :  Yet  again  shall  they 
use  this  speech  in  the  land  of  Judah  and  in  the  cities  thereof,  when  I  shall 
bring  again  their  captivity:  Jehovah  bless  thee,  O  habitation  of  justice, 
O  mountain  of  holiness.  And  Judah  and  all  the  cities  thereof  shall  dwell 
therein  together;  the  husbandmen,  and  they  that  go  about  with  flocks. 
For  I  have  satiated  the  weary  soul,  and  every  sorrowful  soul  have  I  re- 
plenished. Upon  this  T  awaked,  and  beheld ;  and  my  sleep  was  sweet  unto 
me.  Behold,  the  days  come,  saith  Jehovah,  that  I  will  sow  the  house 
of  Isrfiol  and  the  house  of  Judah  with  the  seed  of  man,  and  with  the  seed 
of  beast.  And  it  shall  come  to  pass,  that  like  as  I  have  watched  over  them 
to  pluck  up  and  to  break  down,  and  to  overtlirow  and  to  destroy,  and  to 
afflict;  so  will  I  watch  over  them  to  build  and  to  plant,  saith  Jehovah. 
Ibid.  xxxi.  23-28. 

The  reader  will  observe  in  this  passage  the  sweet  and  delicate 
incoherence  so  characteristic  of  the  Hebrew  mind ;  the  subject 
is  too  great  for  pure  logic.  Yet  it  is  a  most  reasonable  purpose, 
a  most  reasonable  plan,  that  Jeremiah  is  setting  before  the  eyes 
of  his  fellow-countrymen  ;  there  is  nothing  wild  or  arbitrary  about 
it.  They  are  to  yield  to  the  storm ;  they  will  be  overthrown, 
but  they  may  look  with  hope  to  their  revival.     A  difficult  counsel, 


xn]  JEREMIAH   AND   EZEKIEL  311 

perhaps;  but  a  just  and  wise  counsel,  fruitful  in  the  hearts  of 
some  of  those  whom  Jeremiah  addressed;  and  it  produced  the 
fruits  which  Jeremiah  predicted. 

That  double-edged  prophecy,  invective  against  his  nation  in 
the  present,  but  hope  for  their  future,  of  which  Jeremiah  was  the 
spokesman  in  Jerusalem,  was  being  proclaimed  at  the  same  time 
by  his  feUow-prophet  Ezekiel  in  Babylonia,  on  the  banks  of  the 
river  Chebar.  Ezekiel,  Uke  Jeremiah,  was  a  priest ;  he  had  been 
taken  captive  in  the  first  captivity,  when  Jehoiachin  had  surren- 
dered to  Nebuchadnezzar.  Hence  he  prophesied  not  to  the 
people  of  Jerusalem,  but  to  the  Jewish  exiles.  These  exiles  were 
reckoned  by  the  thousand,  perhaps  by  the  ten  thousand.  A 
dejected,  despairing  remnant;  hardly  able  to  raise  their  hearts 
to  any  hope ;  but  not  unaware  of  the  past  glories  of  their  state, 
and  not  now  too  proud  to  listen  to  the  prophetic  word.  Yet 
when  Ezekiel  comes  to  them,  it  is  as  to  an  obdurate  people  that 
he  speaks;  only  it  is  evident  that,  though  the  exiles  may  be 
obdurate,  the  people  of  Jerusalem  are  regarded  as  still  more 
obdurate ;  always,  until  the  final  capture  and  destruction  of 
Jerusalem,  it  is  of  the  people  of  Jerusalem  that  he  is  mainly 
thinking.  When  Jerusalem  is  captured  and  destroyed,  his  tone 
changes  to  impassioned  hopefulness.  The  two  phases  of  his 
mind,  the  severity  and  the  hopefulness,  are  in  the  main  successive  ; 
the  severity  comes  first,  the  hopefulness  afterwards;  and  the 
dividing  line  is  the  fall  of  Jerusalem.  A  few  passages  may  be 
quoted  in  illustration  of  this.  Here  is  a  part  of  the  divine  message 
as  he  first  received  it : 

Son  of  man,  go,  get  thee  unto  the  house  of  Israel,  and  speak  with  my 
words  unto  them.  For  thou  art  not  sent  unto  a  people  of  a  strange  speech 
and  of  an  hard  language,  but  to  the  house  of  Israel ;  not  to  many  peoples 
of  a  strange  speech  and  of  an  hard  language,  whose  words  thou  canst  not 
understand.  Surely,  if  I  sent  thee  to  them,  they  would  hearken  unto  thee. 
But  the  house  of  Israel  will  not  hearken  unto  thee ;  for  they  will  not  hearken 
unto  me :  for  all  the  house  of  Israel  are  of  an  hard  forehead  and  of  a  stiS 
heart.  Behold,  I  have  made  thy  face  hard  against  their  faces,  and  thy 
forehead  hard  against  their  foreheads.  As  an  adamant  harder  than  flint 
have  I  made  thy  forehead:  fear  them  not,  neither  be  dismayed  at  their 
looks,  though  they  be  a  rebellious  house.     Ezekiel  iii.  4—9. 

These  words  are  like  a  strong  phalanx  of  warriors  entering  the 
battlefield,  and  determined  to  carry  the  day.  When,  in  pursuance 
of  this  divine  command,  Ezekiel  came  in  presence  of  the  exiles 
at  Telabib,  he  was  so  overcome  that  for  seven  days  he  could  not 
speak:    and  even  then  he  expressed  himself  at  first  by  symbol. 


312        THE    HEAVENLY    IDEAL   IN   CONFLICT:        [oh. 

not  by  word.  But  it  gradually  becomes  apparent  both  by  symbol 
and  by  word  (for  he  does  at  last  use  abundance  of  words)  that 
the  real  object  of  his  denunciation  is  Jerusalem  itself.  We  may 
be  sure  that  the  exiles  at  Telabib  entertained  the  hope  that 
Jerusalem  would  be  saved,  and  that  they  would  return  thither. 
It  is  Ezekiel's  task  to  tell  them  that  that  hope  is  a  vain  one.  In 
the  vehemence  of  his  denunciation  of  idol- worship,  and  of  Jerusalem 
as  guilty  of  idol-worship,  he  goes  beyond  every  previous  prophet. 
He  does  not  altogether  spare  the  exiles  (see  especially  the  beginning 
of  chapter  xiv),  but  as  against  the  people  of  Jerusalem  he  is 
altogether  on  the  side  of  the  exiles  (see  chapter  xi.  14-20),  The 
first  twenty-four  chapters  of  Ezekiel  are  almost  entirely  a  denuncia- 
tion of  his  own  city  and  nation;  then  follow  eight  chapters  of 
denunciation  of  other  nations :  then  in  the  thirty-third  chapter 
comes  the  long  expected  news :  "The  city  is  smitten."  Speedily 
does  the  prophet's  tone  change.  Though  he  begins  by  telling 
the  people  of  Israel  that  their  whole  land  must  be  made  desolate, 
and  that  it  is  the  selfish  "shepherds,"  or  in  other  words  the 
evil  rulers,  who  have  caused  this,  he  goes  on  to  predict  that  God 
himself  will  redeem  and  save  his  people. 

For  thus  saith  the  Lord  Jehovah:  Behold,  I  myself,  even  I,  will 
search  for  my  sheep,  and  will  seek  them  out.  As  a  shepherd  seeketh  out 
his  flock  in  the  day  that  he  is  among  his  sheep  that  are  scattered  abroad, 
so  will  I  seek  out  my  sheep ;  and  I  will  deliver  them  out  of  all  places  whither 
they  have  been  scattered  in  the  cloudy  and  dark  day.  And  I  will  bring 
them  out  from  the  peoples,  and  gather  them  from  the  countries,  and  will 
bring  them  into  their  own  land ;  and  I  will  feed  them  upon  the  mountains 
of  Israel,  by  the  watercourses,  and  in  all  the  inhabited  places  of  the  country. 
Ezekiel  xxxiv.  11-13. 

Very  beautiful  and  touching  (in  spite  ot  the  fierce  denunciation 
of  Edom  in  the  thirty-fifth  chapter)  are  the  chapters  which  follow. 
The  famous  vision  of  the  dry  bones  which  spring  to  life  again  at 
God's  word  occurs  at  the  beginning  of  the  thirty-seventh  chapter ; 
and  in  the  middle  of  that  chapter  Ezekiel  prophesies  (what,  alas, 
was  not  fulfilled)  that  Ephraim  and  Judah  .should  be  reconciled ; 
and  he  ends  as  follows,  speaking  in  God's  name : 

So  shall  they  be  my  people,  and  I  will  be  their  God.  And  my  servant 
David  shall  be  king  over  thom ;  and  they  shall  all  have  one  shepherd: 
they  shall  also  walk  in  my  judgments,  and  observe  my  statutes,  and  do 
them.  And  they  shall  dwell  in  the  land  that  I  have  given  vmto  Jacob  my 
servant,  wherein  your  fathers  dwelt ;  and  they  shall  dwell  therein,  they, 
and  their  cliildren,  and  th(>ir  cliildren's  cliildren,  for  ever:  and  David  my 
servant  shall  be  their  prince  for  ever.  Moreover  I  will  make  a  covenant 
of  peace  with  them :    it  shall  be  an  everlasting  covenant  with  them :    and 


xn]  JEREMIAH    AND    EZEKIEL  313 

I  will  place  them,  and  rmaltiply  them,  and  will  set  my  sanctuary  in  the 
midst  of  them  for  evermore.  My  tabernacle  also  shall  be  with  them ;  and 
I  will  be  their  God,  and  they  shall  be  my  people.  And  the  nations  shall 
know  that  I  am  Jehovah  that  sanctify  Israel,  when  my  sanctuary  shall 
be  in  the  midst  of  them  for  evermore.     Ibid,  xxxvii.  23-28. 

From  this  most  tender,  consolatory,  and  sublime  vision,  in 
which  all  the  prophecies  of  Ezekiel  culminate,  it  is  necessary  to 
return  to  the  sad  and  tragic  situation  in  which  the  people  of  Judah 
and  Israel  actually  stood  at  the  moment  when  this  prophecy 
was  uttered.  Jerusalem  had  fallen ;  Judah  was  experiencing  the 
lot  which,  more  than  130  years  before,  had  overtaken  the  ten 
tribes.  I  said  that  there  never  was  a  siege  in  all  history,  in  which 
the  passions  and  emotions  of  men  had  so  wide  a  range  as  in  this 
siege  of  Jerusalem,  which  ended  with  its  capture  by  Nebuchad- 
nezzar ;  and  now  I  must  refer  to  an  emotion  of  which  I  have  hither- 
to given  no  example,  namely,  pure  unmingled  grief.  Jeremiah, 
and  even  Ezekiel,  no  doubt  felt  grief  at  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  but 
it  was  a  grief  so  mixed  with  indignation  at  the  sins  of  the  people 
of  Judah,  that  it  hardly  produces  on  us  the  impression  of  grief. 
But  there  were  evidently  pure  souls  in  Jerusalem,  not  prophets, 
aware  of  the  sins  of  the  nation,  but  far  more  aware  of  the  misery  of 
the  nation,  and  impelled  by  their  own  profound  feeling  to  express 
this  misery.  Such  a  one  was  the  author  of  the  book  of  Lamenta- 
tions ;  a  book  attributed  in  our  Bibles  to  Jeremiah,  but  certainly 
not  his,  as  we  may  see  from  chapter  iv,  verse  20  of  the  book ; 

"The  breath  of  our  nostrils,"  so  runs  the  passage,  "the  anointed  of 
Jehovah,  was  taken  in  their  pits,  of  whom  we  said.  Under  his  shadow  we 
shall  live  among  the  nations." 

These  words  plainly  refer  to  the  capture  of  Zedekiah  by  the 
Chaldean  army  in  the  plains  of  Jericho,  after  which  he  was  bHnded 
and  taken  prisoner  to  Babylon  (2  Kings  xxv.  4-7  ;  Jeremiah  xxxix. 
4—7,  lii.  7-11).  Certainly  Jeremiah  entertained  a  very  different 
expectation  concerning  Zedekiah  from  that  which  this  passage 
expresses;  and  to  say  that  Zedekiah  was  "the  breath  of  our 
nostrils  "  was  very  far  from  his  mind.  The  author  of  the  Lamenta- 
tions is  no  prophet ;  but  he  expresses  a  natural  feeling.  A  few 
verses  may  be  quoted  from  this  sad  elegy : 

How  doth  the  city  sit  solitary,  that  was  full  of  people  !    Lamentations  i.  1. 

Jerusalem  remembereth  in  the  days  of  her  affliction  and  of  her  miseries 
all  her  pleasant  things  that  were  from  the  days  of  old.     Ibid.  i.  7. 

Is  it  nothing  to  you,  all  ye  that  pass  by  ?  Behold,  and  see  if  there 
be  any  sorrow  like  unto  my  sorrow,  which  is  done  unto  me,  wherewith 
Jehovah  hath  afflicted  me  in  the  day  of  his  fierce  anger.     Ibid.  i.  12. 


314        THE    HEAVENLY    IDEAL    IN   CONFLICT:        [ch. 

The  youth  and  the  old  man  lie  on  the  ground  in  the  streets ;  my  virgins 
and  my  young  men  are  fallen  by  the  sword.     Lamentations  ii.  21. 

Our  pursuers  were  swifter  than  the  eagles  of  the  heaven ;  they  chased 
UB  upon  the  mountains,  they  laid  wait  for  us  in  the  wilderness.     Ibid  iv.  19. 

They  ravished  the  women  in  Zion,  the  maidens  in  the  cities  of  Judekh. 
Princes  were  hanged  up  by  their  hand ;  the  faces  of  elders  were  not 
honoured.     Ibid.  v.   11,   12. 

Turn  thou  unto  us,  Jehovah,  euid  we  shall  be  turned ;  renew  our  days 
as  of  old.  But  thou  hast  utterly  rejected  us,  thou  eu-t  very  wroth  against 
us.     Ibid.  V.  21,  22. 

It  softens  the  pang  which  a  sympathetic  mind  will  feel  in 
reading  laments  so  piercing,  to  reflect  that  if  these  ancient  Jews 
had  not  sorrowed  over  the  ruin  of  their  country,  they  would 
never  have  had  the  energy  to  effect  the  restoration  of  their  fallen 
city.     Their  intense  sorrow  was  one  element  of  their  power. 

I  have  now  arrived  at  the  lowest  point  in  the  temporal  fortunes 
of  Israel,  during  the  whole  compass  of  the  centuries  which  inter- 
vened between  the  Exodus  and  the  Christian  era.  Out  of  that 
depth  of  humiliation  the  exiled  people  arose  slowly  and  gradually ; 
but  before  they  could  even  begin  to  arise,  this  nadir  of  their 
fortunes  had  to  last  nearly  fifty  years.  That  which  was  at  the 
heart  of  their  essential  unity,  and  therefore  of  their  restoration, 
was  the  doctrine  of  one  God,  by  the  side  of  whom  no  other  being 
was  to  be  placed ;  and  concurrently  with  this,  the  belief  that  the 
history  of  Israel  was  the  great  evidence  of  the  power  and  action 
of  God.  This  belief  was  the  noblest  entertained  at  that  time  by 
any  community  of  men  existent  on  earth ;  yet  the  miraculous 
form  in  which  it  was  cast  was  an  error,  and  had  in  it  the  seed  of 
harm.  But  this  miraculous  form  was  not  adopted  in  ill  faith  ;  nor 
could  it  easily  have  been  dispensed  with,  men  being  what  they  are. 

The  prophet  Ezekiel  stood  at  that  precise  turning-point  of 
Isrgielite  history,  when  the  true  conversion  of  the  people,  to  the 
beliefs  just  enunciated,  began.  Ezekiel  was  not  the  greatest  of 
the  prophets ;  but  he  was  the  most  trenchant  in  his  denunciation 
of  the  idolatry  prevalent  among  the  Israelites  of  his  day.  There 
is  a  tone  of  victory  in  him,  which  there  is  not  in  Jeremiah  ;  Jere- 
miah, we  feel  all  through,  is  losing  his  battle;  Ezekiel  is  winning 
his.  Yet  it  does  not  follow  that  Ezekiel  is  the  superior  of  the  two. 
For  Jeremiah  had,  of  the  two,  the  more  difficult  task ;  the  king 
and  nobles  of  Judah  in  Jerusalem,  fighting  for  temporal  victory, 
were  sure  to  be  less  amenable  to  religious  exhortations  than  the 
exiles  by  the  river  Chebar.  Then  again  the  threatenings  of  Ezekiel 
are  more  earthly  than  those  of  Jeremiah,  taking  a  fair  estimate  as 


xn]  JEREMIAH    AND    EZEKIEL  316 

to  the  genuineness  of  these  latter ;  for  there  is  considerable  room  for 
doubting  the  genuineness  (at  any  rate  in  their  present  form)  of  the 
prophecies  of  Jeremiah  against  the  nations,  from  the  forty-sixth 
chapter  onwards.  But  we  have  no  reason  for  doubting  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  ninth  chapter  of  Ezekiel ;  and  the  judgments  of  God 
are  there  depicted  as  consisting  in  direct  acts  of  slaughter  by  the 
divine  command,  in  a  manner  rare  in  the  prophets. 

Yet  Ezekiel  was  not  merely  a  great,  but  a  tender-hearted 
prophet ;  his  twenty-fourth  chapter,  in  which  he  relates  the  death 
of  his  wife,  must  ever  be  felt  as  most  pathetic ;  and  if  he  threatens 
the  "house  of  Israel,"  it  is  not  from  any  want  of  love  towards  the 
offenders. 

Neither  Jeremiah  nor  Ezekiel  ever  forgets  that  God  is  the  God 
of  the  whole  world.  "Do  not  I  fill  heaven  and  earth ? "  Jeremiah 
represents  Jehovah  as  saying;  and  to  both  prophets,  God's 
judgments  are  extended  over  aU  the  nations.  And  these  judgments, 
in  Jeremiah's  mind,  are  not  for  wrath  alone ;  he  has  a  regard 
for  the  heathen,  as  is  plain  from  the  letter  which  he  sent  to  the 
Jewish  exiles  in  Babylon:  "Seek  the  peace,"  he  writes  to  them, 
"of  the  city  whither  I  have  caused  you  to  be  carried  away  captive, 
and  pray  unto  Jehovah  for  it ;  for  in  the  peace  thereof  ye  shall 
have  peace."  (Jeremiah  xxix.  7.)  This  is,  of  course,  spoken  in 
the  name  of  Jehovah :  the  words  "I  have  caused  you  to  be  carried 
away  "  are  not  intended  to  be  the  words  of  Jeremiah  himself. 

Though  the  duty  of  man  towards  God  is  the  subject  most 
prominent  in  both  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel,  it  must  not  be  thought 
that  either  prophet  is  forgetful  of  the  duties  of  man  towards  man ; 
but  it  is  not  necessary  that  I  should  exemplify  this  point  more 
than  I  have  done  in  what  has  been  written  above. 

Neither  how  Jeremiah  died,  nor  how  Ezekiel  died,  is  told  us ; 
but  the  last  tidings  that  we  have  of  Jeremiah  breathe  of  tragedy, 
almost  as  much  as  his  previous  career;  the  melancholy  history 
is  contained  in  six  chapters,  beginning  with  the  fortieth,  of  the 
book  of  Jeremiah.  Yet  he  had  faithful  friends  ;  to  one  of  these, 
Baruch,  we  probably  owe  the  preservation  of  his  prophecies,  which 
have  reached  us  in  much  disorder,  yet  not  altogether  unfaithfully. 

It  is  natural  to  think  that  Ezekiel  died  in  honour;  his  later 
years  were  spent  in  depicting  the  Jerusalem  of  the  future ;  we 
may  read  his  description  in  the  last  nine  chapters  of  his  book. 

Meanwhile  Israel  and  Judah  were  at  their  lowest  level ;  neither 
honour  nor  esteem  was  theirs ;  hardly  even  a  name ;  deep  darkness 
was  over  them.     Yet  Judah,  at  any  rate,  waited  for  the  dawn. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  CULMINATION  OF  PROPHECY:  THE 
PROPHET  OF  THE  EXILE 

It  was  the  glimmer  o  dawn.  In  strange  lands  had  Israel 
slept  the  sleep  of  sorrow;  the  awakening  came  with  words 
of  consolation  : 

Comfort  ye,  comfort  ye  my  people,  saith  yovir  God.  Speak  ye  to  the 
heart  of  Jerusalem,  and  cry  unto  her,  that  her  warfare  is  a<;complished, 
that  her  iniquity  is  pardoned  :  that  she  hath  received  of  Jehovah's  hand 
double  for  all  her  sins.     The  book  of  Isaiah  xl.   1,  2. 

Who  spoke  these  words;  or  who  wrote  them  ?  They  are 
to  be  found  in  our  Bibles  at  the  beginning  of  the  fortieth  chapter 
of  the  book  of  Isaiah  ;  but  it  was  not  Isaiah  who  wrote  them, 
For  a  century  and  a  half  had  the  voice  of  Isaiah  been  silent 
in  death,  when  these  words  were  first  spoken  or  written  ;  they 
stand  at  the  beginning  of  a  long  prophecy  occupying  the  latter 
part  of  the  book  over  which  "  Isaiah  "  is  affixed  as  the  title, 
twenty-seven  chapters  altogether ;  the  theme  of  these  chapters 
aU  through  is  the  return  of  Judah,  of  Israel,  from  the  Babylonian 
captivity.  I  know  no  adequate  reason  against  our  accepting 
the  primary  obvious  view  which  their  contents  suggest,  that 
the  whole  series  was  written  by^  one  person,  a  contemporary 
of  the  events  which  are  in  succession  described  ;  who  witnessed 
the  rise  of  Cyrus,  and  hailed  him  as  the  future  conqueror  of 
Babylon  even  before  it  actually  submitted  to  him ;  who  was 
aware  (whether  an  actual  eyewitness  or  not)  of  the  transportation 
of  the  idols  of  Babylon  by  the  command  of  Cyrus ;  who  alternately 
rebuked  his  fellow-countrymen  for  their  faintheartedness  and 
for  the  sins  to  which  they  were  prone  and  then  again  set  before 
them  the  high  dignity  to  which  God  was  calling  them  ;    who 

*  I  must  rely  on  the  sufficiency  and  clearness  of  the  exposition  which  follows 
for  the  support  of  my  statement,  that  these  twenty-seven  chapters  were  the  work 
of  a  single  prophet. 


C3H.  xm]        THE    PROPHET    OF   THE    EXILE  317 

felt  the  divinity  which  lies  in  noble  suffering,  and  said  that 
the  chief  of  all  sufferers  would  be  raised  by  God  from  death  to 
be  the  Saviour  of  mankind ;  who,  when  he  arrived  at  the  actual 
sight  of  the  ruined  city  and  temple  of  Jerusalem,  was  struck 
with  sorrow  and  dismay,  but  not  with  despair ;  who  bade  his 
hearers  remember  that  the  heaven  was  the  throne  of  God  and 
the  earth  his  footstool,  and  that  God  would  assuredly  show 
his  favour  to  the  men  of  contrite  and  humble  spirit,  and  that 
for  Jerusalem  a  more  glorious  destiny  than  she  had  yet  known 
was  reserved  in  the  future. 

The  theme  of  this  great  prophet  is,  it  will  be  seen,  continuous, 
and  though  deahng  with  different  sides  of  the  same  subject- 
matter,  not  at  all  complex ;  the  distinctive  feature  of  his  mind 
is  that  aU  the  things  which  he  loves  or  reverences  become  to 
him  of  immeasurable  value,  and  he  delights  in  describing  them 
and  showing  forth  the  adornments  of  their  infinite  beauty. 
God,  Israel,  the  holy  souls  in  Israel,  are  the  centres  around  which 
his  thought  moves  ;  these  shine  out  of  the  background  of  darkness 
and  humiliation  in  which  his  hearers,  the  tribes  of  Israel,  were 
sunk  ;  and  Jerusalem  is  the  place  out  of  which  the  sublime 
future  is  imagined  as  unfolding  itself ;  thither  are  all  nations 
to  go  for  worship,  and  in  love  and  affection  towards  the  children 
of  Zion.  False  and  superstitious  and  cruel  men,  on  the  other 
hand,  shall  abide  in  their  misery,  a  spectacle  of  warning  to  aU 
mankind.  I  confess  I  think  we  must  regret  the  verse  with  which 
the  prophecy  terminates,  which  is  the  first  hint  in  the  Bible 
of  that  terrible  conception,  hell ;  the  verse  contains  a  truth, 
but  we  have  to  restore  to  it  that  light  of  consolation  which  for 
the  moment  was  hidden  from  the  prophet's  eyes.  In  all  else 
he  speaks  most  wisely  and  comfortingly. 

Let  me  now  quote  more  in  full  some  passages  of  this  prophecy, 
so  as  to  bring  out  the  details  of  it  more  clearly. 

We  perceive  at  the  beginning  that  the  return  of  Israel  from 
Babylon  is  the  thought  which  excites  the  prophet  to  speak  ; 
the  return  under  the  guidance  of  God  :  "  Prepare  ye  in  the 
wilderness  the  way  of  Jehovah,  make  straight  in  the  desert 
a  high  way  for  our  God."  Not  that  the  prophet  supposes  that 
God  Uterally  traverses  the  desert ;  he  knows  the  infinity  of  God 
too  well  for  this  ;  but  it  is  the  people  of  God  who  are  to  traverse 
the  desert,  and  they  bear  God  in  their  hearts.  It  is  good  tidings 
to  Jerusalem  and  to  the  cities  of  Judah  which  he  brings  ;  evidently 
he  means  that  they,  now  desolate,   shall  be  inhabited  again  • 


318  THE    CULMINATION   OF   PROPHECY:  [oh. 

this    meaning,    implied    in    the    fortieth    chapter,    is    distinctly 
expressed  at  the  end  of  the  forty-fourth  : 

Thus  saith  Jehovah,  thy  redeemer,  and  he  that  formed  thee  from 
the  womb;  I  am  Jehovah,  that  maketh  all  things. .  .that  saith  of 
Jerusalem,  She  shall  be  inhabited ;  and  of  the  cities  of  Judah,  They  shall 
be  built,  and  I  will  raise  up  the  waste  places  thereof :  that  saith  to  the 
deep.  Be  dry,  and  I  will  dry  up  thy  rivers  :  that  saith  of  Cyrus,  He  is 
my  shepherd,  and  shall  perform  all  my  pleasure  :  even  saying  of  Jerusalem, 
She  shall  be  built ;    and  to  the  temple.  Thy  foundation  shall  be  l«iid. 

CjTus,  the  famous  king  of  Persia,  to  whom  Babylon  surrendered 
in  the  year  538  B.C.,  is  indicated  here  as  the  restorer  of  the  exiled 
people  of  Judah  ;  he  is  spoken  of  again  by  name  at  the  beginning 
of  the  forty-fifth  chapter.  He  had  been  referred  to  previously, 
though  not  named,  in  the  forty-first  chapter,  verse  2  : 

Who  hath  raised  up  one  from  the  east,  whom  he  calleth  in  righteous- 
ness to  his  foot  ?  he  giveth  nations  before  him,  and  maketh  him  rule 
over  kings  ;  he  giveth  them  as  the  dust  to  his  sword,  as  the  driven  stubble 
to  his  bow. 

It  is  Cyrus  who  is  raised  for  the  work,  but  who  has  raised 
him  ?     The  answer  is  given  two  verses  later  : 

I  Jehovah,  the  first,  and  with  the  last ;    I  am  he. 

Cyrus,  in  the  eyes  of  the  prophet,  is  God's  agent  for  the 
restoration  of  Israel,  and  for  the  rebuilding  of  the  city  and  temple 
of  Jerusalem.  It  is  probable  that  the  Jewish  leaders  had  already 
entered  into  communication  with  Cyrus,  and  had  obtained 
from  him  promises  of  goodwill,  even  before  Babylon  had  sur- 
rendered to  him  ;  and  the  assured  tone  in  which  the  prophet 
speaks  would  seem  to  show  that  he  had  some  knowledge  of  this. 
But  it  is  no  just  inference  from  the  prophet's  words  that  Cyrus 
had  a  peculiar  interest  in  the  Jews  more  than  in  any  other  of 
the  nations  that  had  been  oppressed  by  Babylon  ;  the  prophet 
no  doubt  does  not  forbid  our  thinking  this  ;  but  he  does  not 
compel  us  to  think  it.  Whether  Cyrus  had  this  peculiar  interest 
in  the  Jews,  is  a  question  that  will  concern  us  when  the  book 
of  Ezra  comes  under  discussion  ;  but  at  present  it  will  be  sufficient 
to  quote  the  two  other  passages,  besides  those  already  quoted, 
in  which  the  prophet  refers  to  Cyrus.  The  first  is  chapter  xlv. 
1-4  : 

Thus  saith  Jehovah  to  his  anointed,  to  Cyrus,  whose  right  hand  I 
have  holdoii,  to  subdue  nations  before  him,  and  I  will  loose  the  loins  of 
kings  ;  to  open  the  doors  before  him,  and  the  gates  shall  not  be  shut  ; 
I  will  go  before  thee,  and  make  the  rugged  places  plain:  I  will  break 
in  pieces  the  doors  of  brass,  and  cut  in  sunder  the  bars  of  iron  :    and  I 


xm]  THE    PROPHET    OF    THE    EXILE  319 

will  give  thee  the  treasures  of  darkness,  and  hidden  riches  of  secret  places, 
that  thou  mayest  know  that  I  am  Jehovah,  which  call  thee  by  thy  name, 
even  the  God  of  Israel.  For  Jacob  my  servant's  sake,  and  Israel  my 
chosen,  I  have  called  thee  by  thy  name :  I  have  sumamed  thee,  though 
thou  hast  not  known  me. 

The  other  passage  is  from  the  forty-sixth  chapter,  verses  8-13  : 
Jehovah  is  addressing  Israel  : 

Remember  this,  and  show  yourselves  men ;    bring  it  again  to  mind, 

0  ye  transgressors.  Remember  the  former  things  of  old  :  for  I  am  God, 
and  there  is  none  else  ;  I  am  God,  and  there  is  none  like  me  ;  declaring 
the  end  from  the  beginning,  and  from  ancient  times  things  that  are  not 
yet  done  ;  saying.  My  counsel  shall  stand,  and  I  will  do  all  my  pleasure  : 
calling  a  ravenous  bird  from  the  east,  the  man  of  my  counsel  from  a  far 
country  ;  yea,  I  have  spoken.  I  will  also  bring  it  to  pass  ;   I  have  purposed, 

1  will  also  do  it.  Hearken  unto  me,  ye  stouthearted,  that  are  far  from 
righteousness  :  I  bring  near  my  righteousness,  it  shall  not  be  far  off, 
and  my  salvation  shall  not  tarry  ;  and  I  will  place  salvation  in  Zion  for 
Israel  my  glory. 

The  "  ravenous  bird  "  is  Cyrus  ;  a  very  important  person 
to  the  prophet  of  the  exile  ;  but  it  is  on  account  of  Israel  that 
the  prophet  takes  an  interest  in  him.  Cyrus  is  not  mentioned 
again  after  the  passage  just  quoted,  and  after  two  more  chapters 
Babylon,  though  once  or  twice  referred  to,  is  not  named  ;  the 
forty-eighth  chapter  makes  it  apparent  that  the  captive  Israelites 
are  now  free  to  go  out  of  Babylon  : 

"  Go  ye  forth  of  Babylon,"  the  prophet  cries  (verse  20),  "  flee  ye  from  the 
Chaldeans ;  with  a  voice  of  singing  declare  ye,  tell  this,  utter  it  even  to 
the  end  of  the  earth :  say  ye,  Jehovah  hath  redeemed  his  servant  Jacob." 

After  this  utterance  it  is  plain  that  the  difficulties,  whatever 
they  may  be,  in  the  way  of  the  return  from  the  captivity,  do 
not  he  in  Babylonian  oppression ;  and  the  natural  inference 
also  is  that  Cyrus  has  done  his  work  after  having  put  an  end 
to  the  Babylonian  oppression,  since  he  is  not  afterwards  mentioned. 

But  difficulties  there  are  evidently  still,  and  it  is  clear  that  in 
the  judgment  of  the  prophet  these  lie  mainly  in  the  character 
of  the  people  whom  he  is  addressing,  whatever  we  prefer  to  call 
them,  Israelites  or  Jews;  it  may  be  that  we  should  keep  the 
more  general  title,  Israelites,  a  little  longer  ;  it  is  not  till  the  return 
to  Jerusalem  and  Judsea  had  begun  that  the  more  restricted 
title,  Jews,  becomes  the  more  natural  one. 

The  Israelites  are  of  course  the  main  interest  of  the  prophet ; 
not  Cyrus,  however  much  he  may  exalt  him.  And  it  is  of  the 
highest  historical  importance  to  mark  the  relations  between  our 
prophet  and  Israel ;    for  he  reveals  to  us  the  true  soul  of  Israel, 


820  THE    CULMINATION    OF    PROPHECY:  [ch. 

in  its  highest  form  ;  and  he  shows  us  how  Israel  was  at  that 
moment  divided  into  a  nobler  portion  and  a  baser  ;  the  nobler 
portion  being  those  who  embraced  their  God-given  mission 
of  founding  a  State  at  Jerusalem,  which  should  be  a  light  to  the 
world ;  the  baser  portion  being  those  who  only  cared  for  present 
comfort,  many  of  whom  were  sinking  into  the  idolatries  of  the 
heathen. 

When  the  prophet  begins  his  prophecy,  his  hopeful  summons 
to  his  people  is  scarcely  mingled  with  any  reproof ;  take  for 
instance  the  following  passage  : 

But  thou,  Israel,  my  servant,  Jacob  whom  I  have  chosen,  the  seed 
of  Abraham  my  friend  :  thou  whom  I  have  taken  hold  of  from  the  ends 
of  the  earth,  and  called  thee  from  the  corners  thereof,  and  said  unto  thee. 
Thou  art  my  servant,  I  have  chosen  thee  and  not  cast  thee  away  ;  fear 
thou  not,  for  I  am  with  thee  ;  be  not  dismayed,  for  I  am  thy  God:  I 
will  strengthen  thee ;  yea,  I  will  help  thee ;  yea,  I  will  uphold  thee  with 
the  right  hand  of  my  righteousness.  Behold,  all  they  that  axe  incensed 
against  thee  shall  be  ashamed  and  confounded:  they  that  strive  with 
thee  shall  be  as  nothing,  and  shall  perish.     The  book  of  Isaiah  xli.  8- II. 

And  again  : 

I  Jehovah  have  called  thee  in  righteousness,  and  will  hold  thine 
hand,  and  will  keep  thee,  and  give  thee  for  a  covenant  of  the  people, 
for  a  light  of  the  Gentiles  ;  to  open  the  blind  eyes,  to  bring  out  the  prisoners 
from  the  dungeon,  and  them  that  sit  in  darkness  out  of  the  prison-house. 
Ibid.  xlii.   6,  7. 

This  enthusiastic  acceptance  of  Israel  as  the  beloved  servant 
of  God  is  shortly  interrupted  by  a  gentle  reproof  : 

"Who  is  blind,"  cries  the  divine  voice,  "but  my  servant  ?  or  deaf,  as 
the  messenger  that  I  send  ?  who  is  blind  as  he  that  is  at  peace  with  me, 
and  blind  as  Jehovah's  servant  ?  Thou  seest  many  things,  but  thou 
observest  not  ;  his  ears  are  open,  but  he  hoareth  not.  It  pleased  Jehovah, 
for  his  righteousness'  sake,  to  make  the  teaching  great  and  glorious. 
But  this  is  a  people  robbed  and  spoiled  ;  they  are  all  of  them  sneired  in 
holes,  and  they  are  hid  in  prison-houses."     Ibid.  xlii.  19-22. 

Poor  Israel  !  doubtless  with  too  much  truth  was  it  said  that 
they  were  "  a  people  robbed  and  spoiled  "  ;  many,  perhaps 
most  of  them,  could  not  lift  their  souls  to  the  apprehension 
of  the  message  of  hope.  But  the  prophet  resumes  his  encourage- 
ment : 

Hut  now  suith  Jehovah  that  created  thee,  O  Jacob,  and  ho  that 
formed  thee,  O  Israel  :  Fear  not,  for  I  have  redeemed  thee  ;  I  have 
called  thee  by  thy  name,  thou  art  mine.  When  thou  passest  through 
the  waters,  I  will  l>c  with  thee  ;  and  through  the  rivers,  they  shall  not 
overflow  thee  :  when  thou  walki-st  through  the  fire,  thou  shalt  not  be 
burned;     neither   shall    tlii^   flame    kindle   upon   thee.  ..  .Since   thou   hast 


xm]  THE    PROPHET    OF    THE    EXILE  321 

been  precious  in  my  sight,  and  honoiirable,  and  I  have  loved  thee  ;  there- 
fore will  I  give  men  for  thee,  and  peoples  for  thy  life.  Fear  not;  for  I 
am  with  thee:  I  will  bring  thy  seed  from  the  east,  and  gather  thee  from 
the  west ;  I  will  say  to  the  north,  Give  up  ;  and  to  the  south.  Keep  not 
back  ;  bring  my  sons  from  far,  and  my  daughters  from  the  end  of  the 
earth ....  Bring  forth  the  blind  people  that  have  eyes,  and  the  deaf  that 
have  ears.     Ihid.  xliii.   1,  2,  4,  6,  6,  8. 

Satire  on  the  graven  images  of  Babylon  presently  follows  ; 
on  the  gods  that  are  the  handiwork  of  man  ;  and,  shortly  after, 
satire  on  Babylon  herself,  the  fallen  city  : 

Come  down,  and  sit  in  the  dust,  O  virgin  daughter  of  Babylon  ;  sit 
on  the  grovmd  without  a  throne,  O  daughter  of  the  Chaldeans  ;  for  thou 
shalt  no  more  be  called  tender  and  delicate.  .  .  .1  was  wroth  with  my 
people,  I  profaned  mine  inheritance,  and  gave  them  into  thine  hand  :  thou 
didst  show  them  no  mercy  ;  upon  the  aged  hast  thou  very  heavily  laid 
thy  yoke.     Ihid.  xlvii.  1,  6. 

In  the  last-quoted  passage  tenderness  is  still  almost  the  sole 
feeling  of  the  prophet  towards  Israel,  the  Israel  whom  he  saw 
(whether  in  Babylonia  or  in  the  neighbouring  countries)  ;  he 
knows  that  Israel  has  sinned  in  the  past,  but  past  sins  have 
been  wiped  out,  and  he  makes  no  reproach  concerning  them. 
But  in  the  next  chapter,  the  forty-eighth,  the  prophet's  tone 
changes,  and  he  speaks  with  severity,  though  at  last  with  some 
relenting,  against  his  own  people  : 

Hear  ye  this,  O  house  of  Jacob,  which  are  called  by  the  name  of 
Israel,  and  are  come  forth  out  of  the  waters  of  Judah  ;  which  swear  by 
the  name  of  Jehovah,  and  make  mention  of  the  God  of  Israel,  but  not 
in  truth,  nor  in  righteousness.  .  .  .Because  I  knew  that  thou  art  obstinate, 
and  thy  neck  is  an  iron  sinew,  and  thy  brow  brass  ;  therefore  I  have 
declared  it  to  thee  from  of  old  ;  before  it  came  to  pass  I  showed  it  thee  : 
lest  thou  shouldest  say,  Mine  idol  hath  done  them,  and  my  graven  image, 
and  my  molten  image,  hath  commanded  them.... Yea,  thou  heardest 
not ;  yea,  thou  knewest  not  ;  yea,  from  of  old  thine  ear  was  not  opened  : 
for  I  knew  that  thou  didst  deal  very  treacherously,  and  wast  called  a 
transgressor  from  the  womb.  For  my  name's  sake  will  I  defer  mine  anger, 
and  for  my  praise  will  I  refrain  for  thee,  that  I  cut  thee  not  off .  .  .  .Oh 
that  thou  hadst  hearkened  to  my  commandments  !  then  had  thy  peace 
been  as  a  river,  and  thy  righteousness  as  the  waves  of  the  sea  :  thy  seed 
also  had  been  as  the  sand,  and  the  offspring  of  thy  bowels  like  the  grains 
thereof:  his  name  should  not  be  cut  off  nor  destroyed  from  before  me. 
Ihid.  xlviii.  1,  4,  5,  8,  9,  18,  19. 

What  caused  this  stern  rebuke?  If  we  bear  in  mind  the  intense 
zeal  of  the  prophet  for  the  return  of  the  Israelites  to  the  land 
of  their  forefathers,  we  cannot  but  think  that  some  lassitude 
had  been  exhibited  in  this  direction  ;  many  of  the  exiles  had 
settled  in  Babylonia,  and  did  not  wish  to  go  back  to  their  old 

M.  D.  A.  21 


S22  THE    CULMINATION    OF    PROPHECY:  [oh. 

homes ;  and  the  words  of  the  passage  imply  that  idolatry  still 
existed  among  them.  The  liberty  given  them  to  return  to  the 
land  of  Palestine,  to  Jud?ea  and  Jerusalem,  appeared  to  them 
a  terrible  labour  and  trial,  and  by  no  means  liberty.  Against 
this  coldness  of  heart,  against  this  lassitude,  against  this  not 
infrequent  idolatry,  the  prophet  was  aiming  the  sharpest  arrows 
out  of  his  quiver.  He  was  at  once  forbidding  and  commanding  ; 
he  was  forbidding  idolatry ;  he  was  commanding  the  return 
to  Jerusalem  ;  and  all  in  the  name  of  God.  If  this  be  a  true 
account  of  him,  he  was  something  more  than  a  prophet ;  he 
was  an  energetic  inciter  to  present  action.  That  this  is  a  true 
account  of  him,  I  think  we  shall  be  convinced  if  we  read  attentively 
the  passage  last  quoted,  and  also  that  which  immediately  succeeds 
it,  which  I  will  now  quote  (I  quoted  part  of  it  a  few  pages 
back,  but  I  must  quote  it  again  in  this  new  connexion)  : 

Go  ye  forth  of  Babylon,  flee  ye  from  the  Chaldeans ;  with  a  voice  of 
singing  declare  ye,  tell  this,  utter  it  even  to  the  end  of  the  earth  :  say 
ye,  Jehovah  hath  redeemed  his  servant  Jacob.  And  they  thirsted  not 
when  he  led  them  through  the  deserts  :  he  caused  the  waters  to  flow 
out  of  the  rock  for  them  :  he  clave  the  rock  also,  and  the  waters  gushed 
out.  There  is  no  peace,  saith  Jehovah,  unto  the  wicked.  The  book  of 
Isaiah  xlviii.  20-22. 

There  is  in  that  passage  the  apparent,  and  to  a  certain  extent 
real,  incoherence,  which  is  so  common  in  the  Bible  ;  there  is, 
however,  an  inward  connexion  of  thought,  when  we  perceive 
what  the  prophet's  drift  is.  The  exhortation  to  depart  from 
Babylon  is  obvious  in  its  meaning,  but  the  verse  which  follows, 
"And  they  thirsted  not  when  he  led  them  through  the  deserts," 
etc,  is  no  direct  exhortation,  and  appears  to  refer  to  incidents 
of  a  past  time.  It  does  refer  to  incidents  of  a  past  time,  but  it 
has  a  direct  bearing  on  the  time  then  present  ;  for  what  the 
prophet  means  to  say  is  that  just  as  God  led  the  Israelites  through 
the  wilderness  of  Sinai  on  the  way  to  Canaan,  and  caused  water 
to  i\ow  out  of  the  rock  for  them,  so  now  he  will  bear  Israel  safely 
through  the  wilderness  from  Babylon  back  to  Jerusalem.  We 
see  how  deeply  ingrained  the  belief  in  the  miracles  of  the  Exodus 
was  in  pious  Israelites  of  that  day  ;  and  those  who  cannot  share 
the  belief  in  miracles  may  nevertheless  hold  that  God's  protecting 
power  was  truly  over  the  Israelites  of  the  Exodus  ;  and  the 
prophet  whom  I  am  now  quoting  will  not  appear  without  ground 
for  his  faith,  or  for  the  aim  which  he  is  setting  before  liis  fellow- 
countrymen.     Similarly,    the    solemn    words    with    which    this 


xm]  THE    PROPHET    OF   THE    EXILE  323 

particular  utterance  concludes,  "  There  is  no  peace,  saith  Jehovah, 
unto  the  wicked,"  are  evidence  to  us  of  the  deep  importance 
which  he  attached  to  the  counsel  which  he  was  giving,  and  of 
the  danger  incurred  by  those  whom  he  addressed,  if  they  persisted 
in  slothful  indifference. 

Yet  that  indifference  was,  to  a  large  extent,  a  fact ;  and  we 
see  the  result  of  this  fact  in  the  subsequent  utterances  of  the 
prophet.  Israel  as  a  whole  is,  in  his  eyes,  ceasing  to  be  the 
ideal  servant  of  Jehovah.  Once  more,  and  once  only,  does  he 
give  this  title  to  the  nation  in  its  entirety  ;  but  even  in  giving 
the  title,  he  passes  away  from  it,  and  makes  it  clear  that  the 
chosen  servant  of  God  is  intimately  related  to  Israel  indeed, 
but  still  not  identical  with  Israel.  I  must  quote  this  important 
passage,  which  follows  upon  that  last  quoted  : 

Listen,  O  isles,  unto  me  ;  and  hearken,  ye  peoples,  from  far:  Jehovah 
hath  called  me  from  the  womb  ;  from  the  bowels  of  my  mother  hath  he 
made  mention  of  my  name  :  and  he  hath  made  my  mouth  like  a  sharp 
sword,  in  the  shadow  of  his  hand  hath  he  hid  me  ;  and  he  hath  made 
me  a  polished  shaft,  in  his  quiver  hath  he  kept  me  close  :  and  he  said 
unto  me,  Thou  art  my  servant  ;  Israel,  in  whom  I  will  be  glorified.  But 
I  said,  I  have  laboured  in  vain,  I  have  spent  my  strength  for  nought 
and  vanity :  yet  surely  my  judgment  is  with  Jehovah,  and  my  recompense 
with  my  God.  And  now  saith  Jehovah  that  formed  me  from  the  womb 
to  be  his  servant,  to  bring  Jacob  again  to  him,  and  that  Israel  be  gathered 
Tinto  him  :  (for  I  am  honourable  in  the  eyes  of  Jehovah,  and  my  God 
is  become  my  strength  :)  yea,  he  saith,  It  is  too  light  a  thing  that  thou 
shouldest  be  my  servant  to  raise  up  the  tribes  of  Jacob,  and  to  restore 
the  preserved  of  Israel  :  I  will  also  give  thee  for  a  light  to  the  Gentiles, 
that  my  salvation  may  be  unto  the  end  of  the  earth.  Thus  saith  Jehovah, 
the  redeemer  of  Israel,  and  his  Holy  One,  to  him  whom  man  despiseth, 
to  hira  whom  the  nation  abhorreth,  to  a  servant  of  rulers  :  Kings  shall 
see  and  arise  ;  princes,  and  they  shall  worship  ;  because  of  Jehovah 
that  is  faithful,  even  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  who  hath  chosen  thee.  Thus 
saith  Jehovah,  In  an  acceptable  time  have  I  answered  thee,  and  in  a  day 
of  salvation  have  I  helped  thee  :  and  I  will  preserve  thee,  and  give  thee 
for  a  covenant  of  the  people,  to  raise  up  the  land,  to  make  them  inherit 
the  desolate  heritages  ;  saying  to  them  that  are  boimd.  Go  forth  ;  to  them 
that  are  in  darkness,  Show  yourselves.     Ibid.  xUx.  1-9. 

To  whom  does  the  prophet  represent  Jehovah  as  speaking 
in  the  above  passage  ?  Who  is  it  that  is  to  gather  Israel,  to 
be  a  servant  of  rulers,  and  yet  to  be  worshipped  by  princes? 
How  shall  we  appropriate  to  ourselves  the  thought  of  the  prophet 
as  he  thought  it,  his  feelings  as  he  felt  them  ? 

He  has  receded  from  the  thought  that  Israel  as  an  entire 
race  visibly  seen  with  the  eyes  is  the  servant  of  God  ;  but  he 
has  not  receded  from  the  thought  that  the  spiritual  Israel  is 

21—2 


324  THE    CULMINATION    OF   PROPHECY:  [ch. 

the  servant  of  God  ;  the  spiritual  Israel  being  understood  to 
be  the  faithful  in  Israel.  It  will  of  course  be  noticed  that  he 
uses  the  singular  number  when  speaking  of  the  servant  of  God  : 
"  he  said  unto  me,  Thou  art  my  servant  "  ;  and  again,  "  to 
him  whom  man  despiseth,"  the  despised  one  being  the  servant 
of  God  ;  and  it  may  be  asked  whether  the  prophet  has  any 
individual  person  in  his  mind.  But  if  the  prophet  had  had 
any  individual  person  in  his  mind,  he  could  not  have  spoken 
with  this  indefiniteness,  sometimes  as  if  he  himself  were  the 
servant  of  God,  sometimes  as  if  another  person  were  so  ;  his 
thought,  with  all  its  depth,  is  not  so  precise  as  to  determine 
who  the  servant  of  God  is.  No  doubt  he  did  think  of  himself 
as  a  servant  of  God  ;  no  doubt  also  he  saw  others  around  him 
whom  he  deemed  to  be  servants  of  God  ;  but  in  spite  of  this 
his  conception  is  not  absolutely  determined.  It  is  indeed  a 
conception  too  great  for  absolute  definition  ;  and  so  it  continues 
all  through. 

So,  too,  when  we  ask  what  is  the  glorious  end  which  he  has 
in  view,  it  is  sometimes  the  gathering  together  of  the  nations 
into  one  people  of  God,  sometimes  the  consolation  and  restora- 
tion of  Zion,  of  Jerusalem.  He  never  forgets  that  a  special 
material  work  has  to  be  done,  the  bringing  of  the  people  of  Israel 
to  Jerusalem  again ;  but  this  material  work  expands  as  he 
surveys  it,  in  all  manner  of  directions  ;  nay,  it  expands  at  last 
into  a  regeneration  of  the  whole  earth  and  heavens. 

We  ask  with   wonder,   what  effect   this  prophecy,   so  clear 

and  definite  as  far  as  the  return  from  the  Babylonian  exUe  is 

concerned,  so  vast  in  its  expansion  of  that  theme,  produced  on 

those  who  first  heard  it  ?     No  record  tells  us ;    we  can  only 

judge  by  the  course  of  the  prophecy  itself.     The  passage  which 

I  last  quoted  is  succeeded  by  one  full  of  exalted  promises,  and 

of  consolation  to  Zion  for  her  past  afflictions  ;    and  then,  quite 

suddenly,  the  prophet  turns  to  the  actual  people  whom  he  sees, 

and  to  their  sins  in  the  present  and  in  the  past  : 

Thus  saith  Jehovah,  Where  is  the  bill  of  yoiir  mother's  divorcement, 
wherewith  I  have  put  her  away  ?  or  which  of  my  creditors  is  it  to  whom  I 
have  sold  yovi  ?  Behold,  for  your  iniquities  were  ye  sold,  and  for  your 
transgressions  was  your  mother  put  away.  Wherefore,  when  I  came, 
was  there  no  man  ?  when  I  called,  was  there  none  to  answer  ?  Is  my 
hand  shortened  at  all,  that  it  cannot  redeem  ?  or  have  I  no  power  to 
deliver  ?     The  book  of  Isaiah  1.  1,2. 

It  is  plain  that  the  prophet  is  still  addressing  a  backward 
people,  a  people  unwilling  to  inovc  ;    and  from  the  words  which 


XIII]  THE    PROPHET    OF   THE    EXILE  325 

shortly  follow  in  the  same  chapter  it  appears  that  the  prophet 
himself  has  been  suffering  ill-treatment  in  the  cause  for  which 
he  has  been  so  ardent ;  himself,  and  it  may  be  others  along  with 
him,  his  fellow- workers. 

"I  gave,"  he  says,  "my  back  to  the  smiters,  and  my  cheeks  to  them 
that  plucked  off  the  hair :  I  hid  not  my  face  from  shame  and  spitting.  For 
the  Lord  Jehovah  will  help  me  ;  therefore  have  T  not  been  confounded  : 
therefore  have  I  set  my  face  like  a  flint,  and  I  know  that  I  shall  not  be 
ashamed."     Ibid.  1.  6,  7. 

Possibly  the  prophet  had  in  his  mind  the  words  which  his 
immediate  predecessor  Ezekiel  had  written,  as  spoken  to  him  by 
the  divine  voice  :  "  As  an  adamant  harder  than  flint  have  I 
made  thy  forehead  :  fear  them  not  "  (Ezekiel  iii.  9).  At  all 
events  it  is  clear  that  the  task  which  our  prophet  of  the  captivity 
was  championing  did  bring  suffering  in  its  train. 

The  restoration  of  Zion,  the  return  of  Israel  to  Zion,  was 
a  deep-rooted  purpose  in  the  prophet's  heart,  as  all  must  feel 
who  read  his  words  ;  and  yet  he  never  allows  it  to  be  supposed 
that  his  whole  purpose  is  summed  up  in  this  end.  His  tone 
rises  ;  and  in  one  of  the  sublimest  verses  in  the  Bible  he  announces 
that  visible  things  are  as  nothing  when  brought  into  comparison 
with  that  salvation  which  God  offers  : 

Lift  up  your  eyes  to  the  heavens,  and  look  upon  the  earth  beneath : 
for  the  heavens  shall  vanish  away  like  smoke,  and  the  earth  shall  wax 
old  like  a  garment,  and  they  that  dwell  therein  shall  die  like  gnats: 
but  my  salvation  shall  be  for  ever,  and  my  righteousness  shall  not  be 
abolished.     Ibid.  li.  6. 

That  is  a  verse  which  sets,  in  the  most  decisive  manner, 
the  spiritual  cause  above  the  material  effect,  and  this  tempera- 
ment manifests  itself  throughout  his  whole  prophecy.  An 
assurance  such  as  this  verse  contains  would  not,  in  the  ordinary 
affairs  of  men,  be  regarded  as  forcible  in  promoting  practical 
action  ;  the  very  fact  that  it  sets  so  little  value  on  finite  things 
might  make  it  appear  an  exhortation  to  quietude.  But  when 
the  whole  circumstances  are  considered,  a  different  estimate 
will  be  formed  of  the  prophet's  practical  ability.  The  things 
of  earth  which  loomed  so  large  before  the  exiles  in  Babylon 
were  the  dangers  involved  in  any  such  daring  action  as  a  return 
to  Jerusalem  ;  the  danger  from  enemies,  the  danger  from  scarcity 
in  deserts,  the  danger  from  weariness  and  exhaustion ;  it  is  these 
dangers  which  the  prophet  is  exhorting  his  fellow-countrymen 
to  despise  ;  but  as  to  the  return  to  Jerusalem,  that  is  a  command  - 


326  THE   CULMINATION   OF   PROPHECY:  [ch. 

and  promise  which  come  from  God,  and  he  bids  his  hearers 
honour  them.  His  preaching  was  not  merely  exalted  but  practical ; 
and  there  are  verses  towards  the  end  of  the  fifty-second  chapter 
which  appear  to  have  been  written  when  the  first  beginning 
of  that  return,  for  which  he  had  so  earnestly  pleaded,  was  being 
actually  made  : 

"  Depart  ye,  depart  ye,"  he  cries,  "  go  ye  out  from  thence  (i.e.  from 
Babylon),  touch  no  unclean  thing ;  go  ye  out  of  the  midst  of  her  :  be 
ye  clean,  ye  that  bear  the  vessels  of  Jehovah.  For  ye  shall  not  go  out 
in  haste,  neither  shall  ye  go  by  flight ;  for  Jehovah  will  go  before  you  ; 
and  the  God  of  Israel  shall  be  your  rearward." 

The  mention  of  the  "  vessels  of  Jehovah  "  in  this  passage 
confirms  what  the  book  of  Ezra  tells  us  (Ezra  i.  7-11),  that  when 
the  Jewish  exiles  departed  from  Babylon,  Cyrus  (through  liis 
treasurer  Mithredath)  handed  over  to  Sheshbazzar,  who  is  called 
"  the  prince  of  Judah,"  the  sacred  vessels  which  Nebuchadnezzar 
had  brought  from  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  and  had  put  into 
the  Babylonian  temples  ;  these,  the  book  of  Ezra  tells  us,  Shesh- 
bazzar with  the  exiles  actually  brought  back  to  Jerusalem. 
It  must  be  observed,  however,  that  our  prophet  by  no  means 
confirms  the  further  statement  of  the  book  of  Ezra  (chapters  iii.  7 
and  vi.  4)  that  Cyrus  gave  large  contributions  to  the  building 
of  the  temple  out  of  his  own  royal  funds.  That  subject,  and  the 
book  of  Ezra  generally,  belong  to  the  next  chapter,  and  will 
receive  consideration  there.  I  return  to  the  great  prophet 
of  the  exUe. 

He  has  seen  the  first  group  of  exiles  begin  their  return  from 
Babylon  ;  it  would  seem,  from  what  follows,  that  he  himself 
accompanies  them  ;  and  now,  at  that  moment  for  him  so  wonder- 
ful, the  moment  when  the  seed  which  he  had  done  so  much 
to  foster  is  sending  out  its  first  shoots,  he  begins  the  utterance 
of  the  profoundost  of  all  his  prophecies,  the  prophecy  which 
leads  up  from  the  inward  nature  of  the  servant  of  God,  from 
that  self-sacrificing  humihty  which  accepts  death  uncomplain- 
ingly, to  the  victory  of  this  same  servant,  the  victory  to  which 
death  is  the  avenue,  the  victory  of  all-enduring,  everlasting 
love.  In  a  few  words  he  describes  the  whole  compass  of  that 
righteous  conduct  in  which  lies  a  saving  power,  which  brings 
those  who  embrace  its  full  meaning  from  the  confusions  of  earth 
to  the  harmony  and  order  of  heaven.  Though  the  passage  to 
which  I  am  now  referring  is  one  of  the  best  known  in  the  wliole 
Bible,  it  is  so  important  that  I  must  quote  it  in  its  entirety  : 


xm]  THE    PROPHET    OF   THE    EXILE  327 

Behold,  my  servant  shall  deal  wisely,  he  shall  be  exalted  and  lifted 
up,  and  shall  be  very  high.  Like  as  many  were  astonied  at  thee,  (his 
visage  was  so  marred  more  than  any  man,  and  his  form  more  than  the  sons 
of  men,)  so  shall  he  sprinkle  many  nations  ;  kings  shall  shut  their  mouths 
at  him :  for  that  which  hath  not  been  told  them  shall  they  see  ;  and  that 
which  they  had  not  heard  shall  they  understand.  Who  hath  believed 
our  report  ?  and  to  whom  hath  the  arm  of  Jehovah  been  revealed  ? 
For  he  grew  up  before  him  as  a  tender  plant,  and  as  a  root  out  of  a  dry 
groimd  :  he  hath  no  form  nor  comeliness  ;  and  when  we  see  him,  there 
is  no  beauty  that  we  should  desire  him.  He  was  despised,  and  rejected 
of  men  ;  a  man  of  sorrows,  and  acquainted  with  grief  :  and  as  one  from 
whom  men  hide  their  face  he  was  despised,  and  we  esteemed  him  not. 
Surely  he  hath  borne  our  griefs,  and  carried  our  sorrows  :  yet  we  did 
esteem  him  stricken,  smitten  of  God,  and  afflicted.  But  he  was  wounded 
for  our  transgressions,  he  was  bniised  for  oiu-  iniquities  :  the  chastisement 
of  our  peace  was  upon  him  ;  and  with  his  stripes  we  are  healed.  All 
we  like  sheep  have  gone  astray  ;  we  have  tvu-ned  every  one  to  his  own 
way  ;  and  Jehovah  hath  laid  on  him  the  iniquity  of  us  all.  He  was 
oppressed,  yet  he  humbled  himself  and  opened  not  his  mouth  ;  as  a  lamb 
that  is  led  to  the  slaughter,  and  as  a  sheep  that  before  her  shearers  is  dumb  ; 
yea,  he  opened  not  his  mouth.  By  oppression  and  judgment  he  was 
taken  away  ;  and  his  life  who  shalP  recount  ?  for  he  was  cut  off  out  of 
the  land  of  the  living  ;  for  the  transgression  of  my  people  was  he  stricken. 
And  they  made  his  grave  with  the  wicked,  and  with  the  rich  in  his  death  ; 
although  he  had  done  no  violence,  neither  was  any  deceit  in  his  mouth. 
Yet  it  pleased  Jehovah  to  bruise  him  ;  he  hath  put  him  to  grief  :  when 
thou  shalt  make  his  soul  an  offering  for  sin,  he  shall  see  his  seed,  he  shall 
prolong  his  days,  and  the  pleasure  of  Jehovah  shall  prosper  in  his  hand. 
He  shall  see  of  the  travail  of  his  soul,  and  shall  be  satisfied  :  by  his  know- 
ledge shall  my  righteous  servant  make  many  righteous  :  and  he  shall 
bear  their  iniquities.  Therefore  will  I  divide  him  a  portion  with  the  great, 
and  he  shall  divide  the  spoil  with  the  strong  ;  because  he  poured  out 
his  soul  unto  death,  and  was  numbered  with  the  transgressors  ;  yet  he 
bare  the  sin  of  many,  and  maketh  intercession  for  the  transgressors.  The 
book  of  Isaiah  Hi.  13-liii.  12. 

We  read  these  mj^sterious  words,  and  ask  of  whom  the  prophet 
is  thinking,  and  how  he  conceives  of  the  death  of  the  servant 
of  God,  concerning  which  he  writes  so  loftily,  and  whether  this 
death  be  a  thing  of  the  past  or  a  thing  of  the  future.  I  said 
a  little  while  back,  in  writing  of  the  forty-ninth  chapter  (in  which 
chapter  it  is  that  the  prophet  first  treats  of  the  servant  of  God 
as  distinct  from  the  whole  nation  of  Israel),  that  the  prophet's 
conception  of  the  servant  of  God  was  one  too  great  for  absolute 
definition.  We  must  I  think  connect  it  with  those  previous 
prophecies,  mainly  (though  not  quite  exclusively)  uttered  by 
Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  Ezekiel,  of  a  king  who  should  rule  with 

^  I  have  taken  the  translation  of  this  clause  from  the  margin  of  the  Revised  Version  ; 
I  should  have  liked  to  suggest  "his  posterity,"  but  fear  it  is  inadmissible. 


328  THE    CULMINATION    OF   PROPHECY:  [ch. 

equity  and  mercy,  a  king  often  symbolised  under  the  name 
of  David,  or  more  vaguely  (as  in  that  beautiful  chapter,  the 
eleventh  of  Isaiah)  as  "  a  shoot  out  of  the  stock  of  Jesse."  It 
is  impossible  that  our  prophet  should  not  have  known  of  these 
older  prophecies  ;  it  is  impossible  that  he  should  have  disregarded 
them.  He  had  then  before  him  already  the  conception  of  a  great 
person  who  should  lead  Israel  in  the  right  way,  nay  who  should 
lead  the  whole  world  in  the  right  way.  He  inherited  this  con- 
ception ;  but  the  circumstances  of  his  time,  the  increased 
experiences  which  his  nation  had  latterly  won,  made  him  treat 
it  differently  from  the  manner  in  which  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and 
Ezekiel  had  treated  it.  What  our  prophet  of  the  exile  had  seen, 
and  what  his  predecessors  had  not  equally  seen,  was  the  intimate 
connexion  of  holiness  with  suffering  ;  the  holy,  righteous  person 
finds  that  he  can  relieve  the  burdens  of  others  by  taking  them 
upon  himself,  and  in  a  spirit  of  divine  mercy  does  take  them 
upon  himself.  Our  prophet  had  seen  this  exemplified  in  the 
faithful  of  his  own  time  ;  he  had  seen  the  torch  of  living  hope 
handed  on  by  means  of  advocates  who  had  suffered  on  its  behalf  ; 
he  had  suffered  on  its  behalf  himself.  Hence,  when  he  took 
up  the  theme  of  his  predecessors,  he  took  it  up  with  an  addition. 
The  divine  government  of  the  world  was  about  to  become  a 
reaUty  ;  this  had  been  said  by  his  predecessors  ;  what  he  added 
was  that  suffering  and  self-sacrifice  were  the  means  by  which 
that  government  would  come  to  birth.  If  we  take  his  words 
literally,  the  servant  of  God,  in  whom  the  divine  power  was 
to  rest,  must  die  before  he  could  receive  that  power.  Is  there 
any  reason  why  the  words  of  the  prophet  should  not  be  taken 
literally  ? 

There  is  not,  I  think,  any  adequate  reason  ;  but  it  will  be 
proper  to  mention  the  chief  hypothesis  which  involves  a  non- 
literal  acceptation  of  the  death  of  the  servant  of  God.  If  we 
think  of  this  servant  as  meaning  the  suffering  people  of  Israel, 
then  that  people  mu.st  be  regarded  as  suffering  and  humiliated 
indeed,  but  not  as  literally  dying  (for  the  death  of  individual 
IsraeHtes  is  not  the  same  as  the  death  of  the  nation).  This 
interpretation  would  be  a  possible  one,  if  the  prophet  had  not 
so  clearly  shown  that  he  did  not  regard  the  whole  nation  of  Israel 
as  exercising  a  divine  function.  He  had  begun  by  so  regarding 
them  ;  but  he  had  decisively  changed  in  the  forty-eighth  and 
forty-ninth  chapters,  and  never  recurred  to  his  original  attitude. 
The  elect  people  are  not  Israel,  though  they  are  "  a  seed  out 


xm]  THE    PROPHET    OF   THE    EXILE  329 

of  Jacob  "  (Ixv.  9).  When  this  is  clearly  seen,  it  is  no  longer 
natural  to  think  of  this  unnamed  body  of  the  elect  as  the  subject 
of  the  mysterious  passage  on  which  I  am  commenting  ;  they 
did  not  constitute  a  body  clearly  marked  off  to  the  eyes  of  men. 

I  conclude  then  that  the  servant  of  God  in  these  chapters 
is  the  same  conception  as  that  which  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel 
had  put  forward,  of  a  king  who  should  rule  in  God's  name  ; 
but  this  later  prophet  has  discerned  more  of  the  manner  of  the 
divine  rule  than  his  predecessors  had  been  able  to  compass, 
and  has  seen  that  death  must  precede  the  exercise  of  it,  and  that 
self-sacrificing  love  is  the  instrument  by  which  it  is  accomplished. 
What  the  prophet  writes  is  prediction,  not  mere  description 
of  the  past ;  at  the  same  time  the  past  is  the  storehouse  from 
which  he  draws  the  material  for  his  prediction  ;  he  knows  what 
is  to  be,  because  he  has  so  accurately  distinguished  the  working 
of  God's  spirit  in  the  events  which  he  has  seen. 

It  has  not  been  an  unknown  opinion  that  the  prophet,  when 
he  speaks  of  this  divine  sufferer,  means  some  person  actually 
known  to  himself,  who  had  died  as  a  witness  for  God's  truth. 
But  had  the  prophet  meant  this,  it  is  incredible  that  he  should 
not  have  named  the  person  who,  on  this  supposition,  was  so 
exalted  and  so  near  to  God. 

The  interpretation  which  I  have  given  to  the  passage  is, 
I  feel  sure,  a  worthy  one  ;  it  contains  no  element  which,  con- 
sidering the  lofty  spirituality  of  the  prophet  who  wrote  these 
chapters,  can  be  regarded  as  improbable  ;  and  it  is  a  premonition, 
not  in  every  respect  but  in  the  most  important  respects,  of  the 
life  and  purposes  of  Jesus  Christ,  who  in  the  real  climax  of  human 
history,  took  as  his  own  the  spiritual  scheme  which  had  been 
sketched  by  this  prophet  of  the  exile.  That  scheme  is,  to  put 
it   briefly,   the   method   of  government  by   spiritual   attraction. 

But  now,  having  declared  the  fundamental  nature  of  the 
divine  law,  our  prophet  goes  on  to  declare  the  glorious  sequence 
of  it ;  which  in  spite  of  the  apparent  feebleness  of  the  working 
causes,   shall   nevertheless   be   accomplished  : 

Sing,  O  barren,  thou  that  didst  not  bear  ;  break  forth  into  singing, 
and  cry  aloud,  thou  that  didst  not  travail  with  child  ;  for  more  are  the 
children  of  the  desolate  than  the  children  of  the  married  wife,  saith  Jehovah. 
The  book  of  Isaiah  liv.  1. 

He  is  reverting,  it  will  be  seen,  from  the  individual  to  the 
community.  The  sacred  community,  the  sacred  city,  is  dear 
to  the  heart  of  the  prophet ;    and  certainly  he  was  thinking. 


330  THE    CULMINATION   OF   PROPHECY:  [ch. 

in  the  first  instance  of  the  literal  Israel,  the  literal  Jerusalem ; 
it  is  no  imaginary  or  abstract  people  that  he  addresses  in  the 
following  words  : 

O  thou  afflicted,  tossed  with  tempest,  and  not  comforted,  behold,  I 
will  set  thy  stones  in  fair  colours,  and  lay  thy  foundations  with  sapphires. 
And  I  will  make  thy  pinnacles  of  rubies,  and  thy  gates  of  oeirbuncles, 
and  all  thy  border  of  pleasant  stones.  And  all  thy  children  ahal\  be  taiight 
of  Jehovah  ;  and  great  shall  be  the  peace  of  thy  children.  The  book  of 
Isaiah  liv.  11-13. 

Yet  it  must  not  be  thought  that  now,  any  more  than  in  the 
preceding  chapters,  the  prophet  ignores  the  offences  of  that 
Israel  which  he  saw  plainly  before  him.  The  chapters  from  the 
fifty-fifth  to  the  fifty-ninth  inclusive  are  ethical,  and  very  nobly 
ethical,  and  they  are  very  far  from  being  altogether  laudatory 
of  Israel.  We  perceive  that  there  are  in  Israel  violent  men, 
idolaters,  and  hypocrites  even  among  those  who  worship  Jehovah ; 
the  fifty-ninth  chapter  is  especially  strong  in  the  way  of  reproof. 
What  Israelites  the  prophet  has  in  view  is  uncertain  ;  he  may 
at  times  be  recurring  in  his  thoughts  to  those  in  Babylonia  ; 
or  there  may  have  been  other  communities  which  he  passed 
on  the  way,  perhaps  not  always  of  the  tribe  of  Judah.  Always 
he  is  insistent  on  the  humility  which  it  is  needful  for  man  to 
preserve  towards  God  : 

For  thus  saith  the  high  and  lofty  One  that  inhabiteth  eternity,  whose 
name  is  Holy :  I  dwell  in  the  high  and  holy  place,  with  him  also  that  is 
of  a  contrite  and  humble  spirit,  to  revive  the  spirit  of  the  humble,  and  to 
revive  the  heart  of  the  contrite  ones.     Ibid.  Ivii.  15. 

Two  other  things  will  strike  us  in  this  series  of  chapters. 
First,  the  stress  laid  upon  keeping  the  sabbath.  The  same 
characteristic  is  noticeable  in  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel,  but  not 
in  any  prophet  before  these.  In  Hosea  (ii.  1 1),  and  Amos  (viii.  5), 
the  sabbath  is  mentioned  together  with  the  festival  of  the  new 
moon,  as  an  acknowledged  holiday,  but  with  no  extraordinary 
reverence  :  in  Isaiah  (i.  13)  it  is  mentioned  even  slightingly, 
and  again  in  connexion  with  the  new  moon.  But  in  Jeremiah, 
in  Ezekiel,  and  in  the  prophet  with  whom  the  present  chapter 
is  concerned,  the  keeping  of  the  sabbath  is  enjoined  as  a  high 
moral  duty,  while  the  feast  of  the  new  moon  has  sunk  into  an 
entirely  inferior  position,  barely  recognised,  and  with  no  stress 
laid  upon  it.  What  is  the  reason  of  this  difference  of  tone  ? 
Clearly  it  came  from  the  fact  that  the  law,  as  a  written  document, 
was  present  to  the  minds  of  the  later  prophets  in  a  way  in  which 


xm]  THE   PROPHET    OF   THE    EXILE  331 

it  was  not  before  the  minds  of  the  earlier  prophets.  Not  that 
written  commands  were  entirely  unknown  to  Hosea,  to  Amos, 
to  Isaiah ;  we  have  reason  to  believe  that  the  "  ten  words  "  were, 
in  some  form  or  other,  really  contained  in  the  ark  of  the  testimony, 
which  was  in  the  temple  ;  and  no  doubt  some  of  the  legislation 
in  the  twenty-first  and  twenty-second  chapters  of  Exodus  was 
already  in  writing.  But  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  the  main 
substance  of  which  was  first  published  in  the  reign  of  Josiah, 
had  brought  the  written  word  into  a  prominence  unknown 
before ;  and  as  a  written  ordinance,  the  feast  of  the  new  moon 
had  httle  prominence,  the  sabbath  had  great  prominence.  The 
feast  of  the  new  moon  is  prescribed  in  the  book  of  Numbers 
alone,  and  even  there  as  a  duty  incumbent  on  the  priests,  rather 
than  on  the  whole  people  ;  the  emphasis  laid  on  the  sabbath, 
whenever  commands  were  written  down,  must  even  in  early 
times  have  been  far  other  than  this^.  Hence,  while  we  must 
be  far  from  thinking  of  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  and  the  prophet 
of  the  captivity  as  formaUsts  (and  no  doubt  the  institution 
of  the  sabbath  did  really  and  naturally  commend  itself  to  them), 
their  rehgious  spirit  had  something  more  in  it  of  "  the  religion 
of  the  book  "  than  was  the  case  with  Hosea,  Amos,  or  Isaiah. 

To  return  to  the  prophet  of  the  captivity.  The  other  point 
that  we  have  to  notice  in  the  chapters  with  which  I  am  now 
concerned  (the  fifty-fifth  to  the  fifty-ninth  in  the  book  of  Isaiah) 
is  the  breadth  of  human  feehng  shown  in  them.  Far  is  the  prophet 
from  a  narrow  nationaUsm  of  sentiment.     Thus  he  writes  : 

Neither  let  the  stranger,  that  hath  joined  himself  to  Jehovah,  speak, 
saying,  Jehovah  will  surely  separate  me  from  his  people ;  neither  let  the 
eunuch  say,  Behold,  I  am  a  dry  tree.  For  thus  saith  Jehovah  of  the  eunuchs 
that  keep  my  sabbaths,  and  choose  the  things  that  please  me,  and  hold 
fast  by  my  covenant :  Unto  them  will  I  give  in  mine  house  and  within 
my  walls  a  place  and  a  name  better  than  of  sons  and  of  daughters  ;  I 
will  give  them  an  everlasting  name,  that  shall  not  be  cut  off.  Also  the 
strangers,  that  join  themselves  to  Jehovah,  to  minister  unto  him,  and  to 
love  the  name  of  Jehovah,  to  be  his  servants,  every  one  that  keepeth 
the  sabbath  from  profaning  it,  and  holdeth  fast  by  my  covenant  ;  even 
them  will  I  bring  to  my  holy  moiintain,  and  make  them  joyful  in  my 
house  of  prayer  ;  their  burnt  offerings  and  their  sacrifices  shall  be  accepted 
upon  mine  altar  :  for  mine  house  shall  be  called  an  house  of  prayer  for 
all  peoples.  The  Lord  Jehovah  which  gathered  the  outcasts  of  Israel 
saith,  Yet  will  I  gather  others  to  him,  beside  his  own  that  are  gathered. 
Ibid.  Ivi.  3-8. 

1  That  is,  judging  by  what  we  now  find  in  the  books  of  Exodus,  Leviticus,  Numbers, 
and  Deuteronomy. 


332  THE    CULMINATION    OF   PROPHECY:  [ch. 

If  these  counsels  had  been  followed,  how  far  broader  and 
more  humane  would  the  Jewish  mind  and  temper  have  been, 
during  the  centuries  which  followed  the  enactments  of  Ezra 
and  Nehemiah,  than  was  actually  the  case  ! 

The  five  chapters  of  moral  teaching,  to  which  I  have  been 
referring,  are  followed  by  three  in  which  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
prophet  is  carried  to  the  highest  pitch.  Be  it  remembered, 
he  is  approaching  Jerusalem.  Especially  glowing  is  the  sixtieth 
chapter,  the  first  of  the  three.  All  these  chapters  are  so  well 
known,  and  so  perfectly  simple,  that  quotation  from  them  is 
hardly  needed  ;  yet  at  the  end  of  the  sixty-second  chapter 
there  is  a  short  passage  which  may  supply  us  with  an  inference, 
not  always  perceived  : 

Go  through,  go  through  the  gates ;  prepare  ye  the  way  of  the  people  ; 
cast  up,  cast  up  the  high  way  ;  gather  out  the  stones  ;  lift  up  an  ensign 
for  the  peoples.  Behold,  Jehovah  hath  proclaimed  unto  the  end  of  the 
earth.  Say  ye  to  the  daughter  of  Zion,  Behold,  thy  salvation  cometh. 
The  book  of  Isaiah  Ixii.  10.  11. 

What  can  this  mean  but  that  the  mountain  on  which  Jerusalem 
had  stood  is  in  front  of  the  prophet  and  of  the  returning  exiles  ? 
It  is  not  possible  for  us  to  say  precisely  by  what  route  the  company 
had  travelled,  or  whom  they  had  passed  on  the  way  ;  but  part 
of  it  would  naturally  lie  in  a  hilly  country,  which  is  spoken  of 
in  the  fifty-seventh  chapter.  Some  passages  in  the  chapters 
from  the  fifty-sixth  to  the  fifty-ninth  look  as  if  the  company 
had  been  passing  by  settlements  of  unfaithful  Israelites  ;  but 
we  cannot  say  this  certainly.  At  all  events,  in  the  sixty-second 
chapter,  they  are  near  Jerusalem  ;  the  desolation  of  it  must 
have  been  visible  to  them  ;  and  the  change  in  the  prophet's 
feeUngs,  which  could  not  be  avoided,  then  came  upon  him.  A 
sudden  anger  seizes  him  as  he  thinks  what  the  nations,  especially 
Edom,  hav^c  done  against  the  sacred  city  ;  and  in  the  sixty- 
third  chapter  he  sees,  as  in  a  vision,  God  taking  vengeance  upon 
Edom.  But  grief  succeeds  to  anger  ;  he  pleads  with  God  by 
the  memory  of  those  old  days,  when  the  divine  protection  had 
been  over  Israel  in  that  long  and  perilous  journey  from  Egypt 
to  Canaan.  The  days  of  Israel  in  their  own  land  had  been  but 
short ;  will  not  God  remember  his  fatherhood,  and  succour 
his   own    people  ? 

The  sixty-fourth  chapter  finds  the  prophet  actually  in  Jerusa- 
lem ;  what  a  contrast  is  the  ruined  city  to  the  splendid  visions 
which  he  had  lately  expressed  !     He  breaks  forth  into  sad  crying  : 


xm]  THE    PROPHET    OF    THE    EXILE  333 

Be  not  wroth  very  sore,  Jehovah,  neither  remember  iniquity  for  ever : 
behold,  look,  we  beseech  thee,  we  are  all  thy  people.  Thy  holy  cities 
are  become  a  wilderness,  Zion  is  become  a  wilderness,  Jerusalem  a  deso- 
lation. Oxir  holy  and  our  beautiful  hoiise,  where  our  fathers  praised 
thee,  is  burned  with  fire  ;  and  all  o\ir  pleasant  things  are  laid  waste. 
Wilt  thou  refrain  thyself  for  these  things,  Jehovah  ?  wilt  thou  hold 
thy  peace,  and  afflict  us  very  sore?     Ibid.  Ixiv.  9-11. 

Can  anything  be  more  natural  in  feeling  ?  I  would  ask  those 
who  would  split  up  the  twenty-seven  chapters  with  which  I 
am  here  concerned  into  fragments,  and  assign  them  to  two 
or  perhaps  three  different  prophets,  and  perhaps  place  them  at 
a  date  a  century  or  two  later  than  the  surrender  of  Babylon 
to  Cyrus,  whether  every  step  in  the  narrative  is  not  clearly 
marked  as  belonging  to  the  very  first  return  of  the  Jews  from 
their  Babylonian  captivity  ?  Not  only  the  acts  described, 
but  the  emotions  also,  various  as  they  are,  belong  absolutely 
to  this  epoch,  and  to  none  other. 

The  two  chapters  which  follow  the  sixty-fourth  (and  which 
form  the  conclusion  of  the  prophecy)  could  not  be  in  that  strain 
of  unmingled  rapture  which  characterises  the  three  chapters 
from  the  sixtieth  to  the  sixty-second.  The  situation  was  in- 
herently difficult ;  and  though  it  is  not  likely  that  any  of  the 
actual  party  that  had  returned  from  Babylon  were  idolaters, 
it  is  plain  that  there  were  still  Israelites  who  were  so.  It  is 
likely  that  a  remnant  of  the  poorest  Jews  had  continued  to  live 
in  Judaea  aU  through  the  years  of  the  captivity,  and  how  far 
they  may  have  erred  spiritually  we  have  no  means  of  knowing  ; 
but  also  we  should  rather  judge  from  the  language  used,  that 
the  prophet  returned  to  Babylon  to  obtain  fresh  recruits  for  the 
settlement  at  Jerusalem.  Verses  like  the  following  would  seem 
naturally  to  refer  to  sojourners  in  Babylon,  not  to  dwellers 
in  Judaea  : 

I  have  spread  out  my  hands  all  the  day  unto  a  rebellious  people, 
which  walketh  in  a  way  which  is  not  good,  after  their  own  thoughts: 
a  people  that  provoketh  me  to  my  face  continually,  sacrificing  in  gardens, 
and  burning  incense  upon  bricks,  &c.     Ibid.  Ixv.  2,  3. 

The  prophet,  even  after  the  return  from  the  exile  had  begun, 
had  plainly  a  very  difficult  task  before  him.  But  in  how  much 
greater  a  degree  visible  things  fail  him,  so  much  the  more  fervently 
does  he  rest  on  the  invisible.  Listen  to  the  words  which  he  hears 
the  voice  of  God  saying  : 

Behold,  I  create  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth :  and  the  former  things 
shall  not  be  remembered,  nor  come  into  mind.     Ibid.  Ixv.  17. 


884         THE   CULMINATION   OF   PROPHECY        [ch.  xm 

And  so  again,  when  the  difficulty  of  building  the  temple 
anew  presses  hard,  he  reverts  to  that  higher  spiritual  reality 
which  transcends  temples  of  stone  : 

Thus  saith  Jehovah :  The  heaven  is  my  throne,  and  the  earth  is  my 
footstool :  what  manner  of  house  will  ye  build  unto  me  ?  and  what  place 
shall  be  my  rest  ?     The  book  of  Isaiah  Ixvi.  1. 

Yet  after  all,  such  sayings  must  be  taken  with  proper  limita- 
tion. Though,  when  hard  pressed  by  visible  failure,  the  prophet 
takes  refuge  in  the  invisible  hope  and  trust,  yet  the  earthly 
Jerusalem  is  to  the  end  sacred  to  him,  beloved  by  him,  the  theme 
of  his  ardent  hope  : 

"  Rejoice  ye  with  Jerusalem,"  he  cries  out,  "  and  be  glad  for  her,  all  ye 
that  love  her ;  rejoice  for  joy  with  her,  all  ye  that  mourn  over  her  ;  that 
ye  may  suck  and  be  satisfied  with  the  breasts  of  her  consolations ;  that 
ye  may  milk  out,  and  be  delighted  with  the  abundance  of  her  glory."  Ibid. 
Ixvi.  10,  11. 

In  this  situation,  of  imperfect  fulfilment  but  ardent  hope, 
the  book  of  the  prophet  of  the  exile  terminates.  Sorrow  and 
joy  are  both  with  him  ;  sorrow  for  the  abundance  of  the  faithless- 
ness which  he  sees,  joy  in  the  prospect  of  a  victory  which  is  to 
come. 

My  theme  in  the  present  chapter  has  been  the  delineation 
of  one  of  the  greatest  among  men  :  and  no  mere  theorist  either, 
no  mere  visionary  ;  but  one  who,  more  than  any  other,  created 
the  spirit  which  enabled  the  Jews  to  return  from  Babylon  to 
their  own  land.  Without  that  return,  the  whole  message  of 
the  Jews  to  the  world  would  have  been  frittered  away  ;  for  the 
time  was  not  ripe  for  a  religion  that  had  no  local  centre  at  all. 
Out  of  the  earthly  Jerusalem  has  sprung  the  Christian  hope 
of  a  heavenly  Jerusalem — which  is  indeed  the  greater  ;  but  the 
earthly  .Jerusalem  was  needed  as  a  seed-ground  for  the  heavenly 
which  was  to  come. 

Who  was  this  great  prophet  ?  We  know  not  his  name, 
and  scarcely  anything  of  his  history  ;  and  the  only  honour  which 
his  fellow-countrymen  accorded  to  him  was  to  attribute  his 
writings  to  the  most  illustrious,  save  himself,  of  all  the  prophets 
whom   Israel  produced. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE   RESTORATION   OF    JERUSALEM:     THE    PSALMS: 
ZECHARIAH 

The  Babylonian  captivity  was  a  time  of  darkness :  the  dawn 
came  with  that  great  prophet  whose  writings  I  described  in 
the  foregoing  chapter. 

But  how  long  and  obscure  was  that  twilight  of  dawn  !  How 
stormy  and  troublous  were  the  ages  before  full  daylight  shines 
again  on  that  people  in  whose  hearts  was  buried  the  secret  of 
God  !  The  return  from  the  captivity,  the  rebuilding  of  the 
temple  and  of  Jerusalem,  the  rigid  legislation  of  Ezra,  the  diverse 
fortunes  of  the  Jews  as  the  Persian  dominion  yielded  to  the 
Greek  dominion,  and  lastly  as  the  Ptolemies  of  Egypt  receded 
from  their  tenure  of  Palestine  and  the  Syrian  Greek  dynasty 
(the  Antiochi)  succeeded  thereto — what  changes  were  these, 
and  how  little  do  we  know  of  them  !  I  must  talk  now  of  Jews, 
not  of  Israelites,  as  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem  and  Judsea; 
Israelites  they  were  of  course,  but  not  the  whole  of  Israel. 

And  now  let  me  mention  the  point  of  difficulty  and  doubt 
which  stands  in  our  front  at  the  very  beginning  of  this  subject. 
Was  the  return  of  the  Jews  from  the  Babylonian  captivity  a 
rapid  or  a  slow  process  ?  Was  Zerubbabel,  the  famous  rebuilder 
of  the  temple  at  Jerusalem,  a  person  who  lived  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  sixth  century  before  Christ,  under  Darius  son  of 
Hystaspes  (the  conqueror  who  won  supreme  station  by  his 
own  warlike  prowess)  ;  or  was  he  a  person  who  lived  a  hundred 
years  later,  under  the  comparatively  insignificant  Darius  Nothus  ? 
The  former  is  so  much  the  ordinary  view,  that  I  assumed  it 
as  a  matter  of  course  when  I  began  to  inquire  into  this  subject. 
I  found  myself  forced  to  change  it ;  and  my  conclusion  is  that 
the  view  which  places  Zerubbabel  about  the  dates  422-418  B.C. 
is  not  subject  to  any  serious  difficulty,  while  it  gives  a  simplicity 
and  clearness  to  the  whole  tenor  of  the  history  which  is  quite 
wanting  to  the  ordinary  view^. 

^  The  later  date,  which  I  myself  follow,  has  had  some  supporters ;  and  I  may 
especially  name  Sir  Henry  Howorth  as  having  anticipated  some  of  my  arguments 
in  the  present  chapter,  and  in  the  first  Appendix  to  it. 


336  THE    RESTORATION    OF   JERUSALEM:  [oh. 

It  will  be  best  for  me  to  give  first  a  brief  chronological  state- 
ment of  both  views;  and  I  will  begin  by  stating,  with  dates, 
the  ordinary  view,  which  is  the  one  that  I  do  not  hold : 

B.C. 

Return  of  Jews  from  Babylon,  by  permission  of  Cyrus,  to  the 

number  of  some  40,000  538 

Commencement  of  rebuilding  the  temple  by  Zenibbabel       . .        537 
The  rebuilding  stopped  through  hostile  influences     . .  .  .        536 

Recommenced  by  Zerubbabel,  by  permission  of  Deu-ius  son  of 

Hystasjjes  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .        520 

The  temple  completed        ,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .        516 

The  half -real,  half -fabulous  story  told  in  the  book  of  Esther 

between  485  B.C.  and  465 
The  mission  of  Ezra  to  Jerusalem  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .        468 

The  mission  of  Nehemiah,  and  the  rebuilding  of  the  walls     . .        446 
The  last  dated  incident  in  the  book  of  Nehemiah         . .  .  .        433 

The  incident  mentioned  in  the  papyri  of  Elephantine  near  Assuan       407 
The  incidents  mentioned  in  Josephus,  Antiquities,  book  xi. 

cc.  7  and  8  are  subject  to  so  much  doubt  on  this  supposition 

that  they  cannot  be  dated. 
Seizure  of  Jerusalem  by  Ptolemy  I  king  of  Egypt  .  .  .  .        320 

Such  is  the  sequence  of  the  main  events  in  Jewish  history 
on  the  supposition  that  Zerubbabel  belongs  to  the  time  of  Darius 
son  of  Hystaspes.  But  if  he  belonged  to  the  time  of  Darius 
Nothus,  a  century  later  than  the  earlier  Darius,  the  chronological 
table  is  as  follows : 

B.C. 

First  return  of  Jews  from  Babylon,  in  not  very  great  numbers, 

with  the  prophet  of  the  exile  (i.e.  the  writer  of  Isaiah 

xl.-lxvi.)  and  also  with  Sheshbazzar  (Ezra  i.)      .  .        about  538 
A  temple  built,  of  which  the  only  record  is  in  the  Psalms  (e.g. 

Psalm  V.  xxvii.  &c.)     .  .  .  .  . .  .  .  .  .        about  530 

The  troubles  for  which  the  book  of  Esther  is  evidence 

between  485  B.C.  and  465 
During  these  troubles  the  above-mentioned  temple  is  destroyed 

(Psalms  Ixxiv.  and  Ixxix.)      .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    perhaps  483 

Efforts  to  rebuild  the  temple  and  walls  in  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes 

Longinuinus  frustrated  (see  Ezra  iv.  7-24).  .  .  .       about  460 

Return    of    Zerubbabel    with    a   large    number   of   Jews   from 

Babylon  to  Jeru.salem,  by  permission  of  Darius  Nothus 

about  423 
The  t(!inple  rebuilt  and  finally  finislied  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .        418 

The   incident  numtioned   in   the   papyri   of   IClephantine  near 

.Arsuhu    .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .        407 

The  mission  of   Ezra  to  Jeru.saleni  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .        398 

The  mission  of  Nehemiah,  and  rebuilding  of  the  walls.  .  .  .        385 

The  last  dated  incident  in  the  book  of  Nehemiah  .  .  .  .        373 

The   incidents    mentioned    in   Josephus,   Ajitiquitics,    book   xi. 

cc.  7  and  H  .  .  .  .  from  about  3(50  B.C.  to  about  332 

Seizure  of  Jerusalem  by   i'tolemy  1,  king  of  Egypt   .  .  .  .        320 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  337 

Following,  as  I  do,  the  second  of  these  two  chronologies,  I  will 
now  mention  the  most  remarkable  feature  (besides  the  simplicity 
of  historical  sequence)  that  will  appear  as  I  tell  the  tale.  This  is, 
that  the  Jews  will  be  seen  in  a  new  hght,  brave,  enduring,  patient, 
tenderhearted;  imperfect  indeed,  and  falling  into  error  at  last; 
yet  in  a  memorable  age  most  memorable.  My  best  plan  will  be 
to  tell  their  story  as  I  see  it,  with  as  Uttle  argument  as  possible, 
though  not  disguising  difficulties ;  the  most  important  arguments 
I  will  reserve  for  an  Appendix. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  in  the  last  chapter  I  have  described 
the  first  return  of  the  Jews  from  Babylon,  as  it  is  to  be  gathered 
from  the  ardent  writing  of  the  great  prophet  of  the  exile  (and 
his  writing,  it  will  have  been  seen,  contains  notes  of  history, 
as  well  as  imaginative  predictions  of  the  future).  No  one  will 
say  that  his  description  of  the  situation  as  he  actually  saw  it 
is  a  very  cheerful  or  happy  one,  enthusiastic  as  his  hopes  of  the 
future  were.  He  has  praised  Cyrus  ;  but  he  has  nothing  to 
say  of  any  help  in  money  or  materials  given  by  Cyrus  for  the 
building  of  the  temple,  such  as  is  mentioned  in  Ezra  iii.  7,  vi.  3,  4 
and  1  Esdras  vi.  24,  25.  It  is  not  likely  indeed  that  Cyrus  made 
any  such  gifts  ;  there  was  no  reason  why  he  should  distinguish 
the  Jews  from  the  other  peoples  whom  he  had  liberated  from 
the  Babylonian  yoke. 

It  would  follow  then  that  the  first  company  of  exiles  who 
returned  from  Babylon  to  Jerusalem  were  poor,  and  not  very 
numerous.  Yet  the  statement  in  the  first  chapter  of  Ezra, 
that  they  carried  with  them  the  vessels  of  gold  and  silver  which 
Nebuchadnezzar  had  taken  out  of  the  temple  at  Jerusalem 
and  had  retained  at  Babylon,  is  quite  probable,  and  is  supported 
by  the  prophet  of  the  exile  ^.  Neither  have  we  any  reason  to 
doubt  the  accuracy  of  the  first  chapter  of  Ezra,  when  it  tells 
us  that  Sheshbazzar,  "  the  prince  of  Judah,"  was  the  leader 
of  the  returning  exiles. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  second  chapter  of  Ezra  has  no  business 
at  all  to  be  where  it  is  ;  the  hst  which  it  gives  of  the  returning 
exiles  does  not  properly  belong  to  the  reign  of  Cyrus  at  all ; 
it  belongs  to  the  time  of  Zerubbabel,  it  is  true,  but  that  time 
was  not  the  time  of  Cyrus.  (For  the  proof  that  this  was  the  case, 
see  the  first  Appendix  to  the  present  chapter.)  The  motive 
for  its  insertion  where  we  find  it  in  the  book  of  Ezra  is  a  quite 
intelligible  one;   it  was  borrowed  in  order  to  give  fullness  and 

^  The  book  of  Isaiah  Iii.  11. 
M.  D.  A.  22 


338  THE    RESTORATION    OF   JERUSALEM:  [oh. 

substance  to  a  famous  event,  the  first  return  of  the  Jews  from 
Babylon  by  permission  or  command  of  Cyrus  ;  for  the  account 
of  this  event  in  the  first  chapter  of  Ezra  was  certainly  but  meagre. 
The  third  chapter  of  Ezra  is  a  further  attempt  to  amplify  and 
adorn  the  narrative  of  the  same  event ;  it  is  a  picturesque  and 
imaginative^  composition,  which  apparently  draws  one  of  its 
main  themes  (the  weeping  of  the  old  men  who  had  seen  the 
ancient  temple)  from  a  hint  in  the  second  chapter  of  the  prophet 
Haggai.  The  opening  verses  of  the  fourth  chapter  of  Ezra 
may  contain  a  true  fact,  but  are  misplaced.  In  the  sixth  verse 
of  this  chapter,  however,  we  have  real  though  brief  information  : 

And  ill  the  reign  of  Ahasueriis,  in  the  beginning  of  his  reign,  wrote 
they  an  accusation  against  the  inhabitants  of  Judah  and  Jerusalem. 

This  verse  at  once  reminds  us  of  the  book  of  Esther  ;  Ahasuerus 
is,  as  is  now  known,  Xerxes^  ;  and  after  this  the  book  of  Ezra 
proceeds  in  a  generally  trustworthy  manner,  the  kings  being 
named  in  the  right  order,  and  an  order  which  clearly  indicates 
that  the  king  of  Persia  under  whom  Zerubbabel  built  the  temple 
was  Darius  Nothus. 

But  it  will  be  seen  that  on  this  showing  there  is  a  great  gap 
of  fifty  years  at  least  during  which  the  history  is  a  blank.  As 
far  as  any  historical  narrative  is  concerned,  we  know  nothing 
at  all  of  what  happened  between  the  return  of  the  first  exiles 
in  the  time  of  Cyrus  and  the  troubles  of  which  we  have  evidence 
in  the  book  of  Esther,  which  took  place  in  the  reign  of  Xerxes. 
Or,  giving  the  dates  as  precisely  as  we  can,  from  537  B.C.  to 
485  B.C.  historical  evidence  fails  us.  At  the  beginning  of  this 
time  we  have  as  evidence  the  last  twenty-seven  chapters  of 
the  book  of  Isaiah  and  the  first  chapter  of  the  book  of  Ezra  ; 
at  the  end  of  it  we  have  the  book  of  Esther  and  the  single  verse, 
Ezra  iv.  6.     Are  the  intervening  years  really  a  blank  ? 

No,  they  are  not  a  blank  ;  they  are  filled  up  by  a  large  portion 
of  the  psalms;  roughly  speaking,  by  the  first  eighty-nine  psalms 
in  our  book  of  Psalms.  I  must  not,  of  course,  be  understood 
to  speak  with  absolute  precision.  1  have  already,  in  speaking  of 
David,  mentioned  the  probability  that  some  of  these  i)salms  trace 
their  origin  from  him  and  his  contemporaries,  though  not  exactly 
in  the  form  in  wliich  wo  have  them  now.     On  the  other  hand, 

^  Siiniliir  ima^iimtivf  stories  aro  found  in  tlie  l)ook.s  of  ("liioniili^s,  of  which  (he 
hook  of  Kzni  is  a  continuation;  soe  for  instance  the  grciat  victories  attrihuted  to  the 
kinj,'s  Ahijah  anti  Asa  in  2  Chronicles  xiii.  and  xiv. 

-  See  Saycc's  Kzrii,  Xihrminh.  and  K.sthcr,  )).  22.  .Miasuenis  .Akliasverosh  - 
(in   Persian)   KlishayTirsha    -  Xerxes. 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  339 

a  few  may  be  later  than  the  period  I  have  named,  and  after 
the  close  of  the  reign  of  Xerxes.  The  eighty-fifth  psalm  cer- 
tainly belongs  to  a  later  and  more  settled  time  than  the  years 
between  538  B.C.  and  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Xerxes.  But  by 
far  the  greater  number  of  these  eighty -nine  psalms  exactly  suit  the 
period  of  which  I  am  speaking,  and  they  suit  no  other  period. 

Let  it  be  noted  that  they  continue,  with  slight  differences, 
the  tone  and  the  spiritual  horizon  of  the  great  prophet  of  the 
exile.  There  is  indeed  more  mourning  and  woe  in  them  ;  there 
is  an  immensity  of  mourning  and  woe  in  these  eighty-nine 
psalms.  But  the  prophet  of  the  exile  speaks  of  mourning  and 
woe  also.  Then  there  is  in  these  psalms  that  peculiarity  which 
is  so  strong  in  the  prophet  of  the  exile ;  their  representation 
is  that  the  path  of  mourning  and  woe  is  that  which  leads  to 
future  glory.  This  is  the  teaching  of  the  chapter  which  is  reckoned 
the  fifty-third  in  the  book  of  Isaiah  ;  and  this  is  the  teaching 
of  the  twenty-second  psalm.  Internal  evidence  makes  us  sure 
that  those  two  compositions  were  not  written  at  periods  of  time 
far  apart.  The  sixty-ninth  psalm  has  very  much  the  same 
characteristics  ;  and  the  alternation  of  anguish  and  hopefulness 
is  very  marked  in  the  whole  series. 

But  there  is  one  characteristic  in  which  these  eighty-nine 
psalms  do  differ  from  the  prophet  of  the  exile  ;  there  is  very 
much  more  fighting  in  them.  That  is  natural ;  the  prophet 
of  the  exile  was  accompanying  a  set  of  travelling  emigrants, 
who  would  have  no  time  to  make  enemies  during  their  journey, 
and  who  would  choose  the  routes  where  there  was  least  danger. 
But  when  the  exiles  had  settled  down  at  Jerusalem  or  in  its 
neighbourhood,  they  could  hardly  escape  fighting.  Their  neigh- 
bours, Edomites,  Moabites,  Ammonites,  were  precisely  those 
who  had  suffered  in  the  never-forgotten  reigns  of  David  and 
Solomon,  and  who  had  been  overjoyed  by  the  destruction  of 
Jerusalem  and  the  captivity  of  the  Jewish  nation.  In  part, 
the  inhabitants  of  what  had  been  northern  Israel  entertained 
the  same  sentiments  of  hostility  to  the  returning  Jews  ;  but  it 
is  evident  that  there  was  here  a  mixture  of  sentiments  ;  the 
Samaritans  (to  use  the  familiar  name)  showed  the  diversity 
in  the  strain  of  their  blood ^  by  diversity  of  sentiments.  The 
Samaritans  mentioned  in  the  papyri  of  Elephantine   (407  B.C.) 

^  See  2  Kings  xvii.  24,  for  the  action  of  the  king  of  Assyria,  after  he  had  carried 
off  large  numbers  of  the  ten  tribes  to  Assyria  and  Media,  in  colonising  northern  Israel 
with  Cuthaeans,  &c.  But  after  all,  most  of  the  northern  Israelites  were  left  in  their 
own  land. 

22—2 


340  THE    RESTORATION    OF   JERUSALEM:  [ch. 

were  not  anti-Jewish  in  sentiment.  But  no  doubt  there  were 
Samaritans  who  were  anti-Jewish.  In  any  case,  the  small 
community  of  Jews  who  established  themselves  at  Jerusalem 
during  the  closing  years  of  the  reign  of  Cyrus  soon  found  that 
they  had  to  fight  for  their  tenure  of  that  city  and  its  surroundings. 
The  fifty-third  psalm  is  one  that  mentions  this  ;  it  is  praxjtically 
the  same  as  the  fourteenth  psalm  ;  but  I  will  quote  the  fifty-third 
by  preference,  because  it  has  a  clause  which  has  accidentally 
dropped  out  of  the  other  psalm.     Here  it  is  : 

The  fool  hath  said  in  his  heart,  There  is  no  God. 

Corrupt  are  they,  and  have  done  abominable  iniquity  ;  there  is  none 
that  doeth  good. 

God  looked  down  from  heaven  upon  the  children  of  men,  to  see  if 
there  were  any  that  did  understand,  that  did  seek  after  God. 

Every  one  of  them  is  gone  back ;  they  are  together  become  filthy ; 
there  is  none  that  doeth  good,  no,  not  one. 

Have  the  workers  of  iniquity  no  knowledge  ?  Who  eat  up  my  people 
as  they  eat  bread,  and  call  not  upon  God. 

There  were  they  in  great  fear,  where  no  fear  was:  for  God  hath 
scattered  the  bones  of  him  that  encampeth  against  thee  ;  thou  hast 
put  them  to  shame,  because  God  hath  rejected  them. 

Oh  that  the  salvation  of  Israel  were  come  out  of  Zion !  When  God 
bringeth  back  the  captivity  of  his  people,  then  shall  Jacob  rejoice,  and 
Israel  shall  be  glad. 

It  is  clear  that  when  that  psalm  was  written  the  captivity 
was  not  absolutely  at  an  end;  that  the  people  of  God  were 
under  the  necessity  of  fighting  against  heathen  enemies,  if  not 
for  their  existence,  at  all  events  for  their  fiberty.  The  enemies 
are  marked  as  heathen,  not  Israelite,  by  the  phrase  that  they 
"  eat  up  my  people." 

But  where  did  that  fighting  take  place  ?  (The  fourteenth 
psalm  is  less  clear  than  the  fifty-third  as  to  the  fact  of  this  fighting, 
for  it  leaves  out  the  clause  "  for  God  hath  scattered  the  bones 
of  him  that  encampeth  against  thee  "  ;  but  the  clause  is  needed 
to  make  the  psalm  intelligible.)  It  is  not  easy  to  think  that 
such  fighting  would  take  place  in  Babylonia,  where  imperial 
armies  would  always  be  at  hand  (for  against  these  the  Jews 
could  not  contend).  But  when  the  return  had  begun,  when 
a  few  thousand  of  the  Jews  were  claiming  for  themselves  their 
old  city  of  Jerusalem  and  the  surrounding  territory,  then  fighting 
would  begin  ;  not  so  much  because  the  Jews  were  driving  out 
actual  holders  of  the  ground,  but  because  their  antecedent 
history  and  their  exalted  national  pride  made  them  unpopular 
with  the  surrounding  nations,  and  their  resumption  of  the  ancient 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  341 

capital  of  their  race  would  emphasise  the  suspicion  under  which 
they  lay.  We  may  be  sure  that  Edomites,  Ammonites,  and 
Moabites  would  be  on  the  alert  when  this  began  to  take  place, 
and  would  do  their  best  to  prevent  the  Jews  becoming  again 
a  power  in  the  world ;  and  the  Samaritans,  under  their  half- 
heathen  leaders,  might  on  occasions  join  in  against  the  Jews. 
The  fighting  that  resulted  from  such  a  motive  would  not  be  very 
thorough-going  or  very  determined,  but  it  would  be  incessant 
and  harassing  ;  and  sometimes  one  side,  sometimes  the  other, 
would  obtain  the  advantage.  At  the  time  when  the  psalm 
just  quoted  was  written,  the  Jews  had  the  advantage ;  but 
this  was  by  no  means  always  the  case,  as  we  shall  see. 

The  psalm  just  quoted  gathers  together  in  one  the  evidence 
that  the  period  when  the  psalm  was  written  was  the  period 
of  the  captivity  (though  after  the  first  beginning  of  the  return), 
and  that  fighting  was  taking  place  between  the  people  of  God 
and  heathen  enemies,  and  that  in  aU  probability  that  fighting 
took  place  not  in  Babylonia  but  in  Judsea. 

It  is  desirable  to  show  the  support  which  other  psalms  give 
to  the  reality  of  the  situation  thus  described.  In  the  ninth  and 
tenth  psalms,  the  iniquity  of  "  the  nations  "  is  the  prominent 
theme  ;  and  in  contrast  to  the  nations,  the  "  needy,"  the  "  poor," 
and  the  "  meek  "  are  represented  as  the  objects  of  God's  favour, 
who  are  hoping  for  divine  deliverance.  The  ninth  psalm  ends 
with  the  words  : 

Arise,  Jehovah :  let  not  man  prevail :  let  the  nations  be  judged  in 
thy  sight. 

Put  them  in  fear,  Jehovah:  let  the  nations  know  themselves  to  be 
but  men. 

And  the  tenth  psalm  ends  in  this  way  : 

Jehovah  is  king  for  ever  and  ever ;  the  nations  are  perished  out  of 
his  land. 

Jehovah,  thou  hast  heard  the  desire  of  the  meek  :  thou  wilt  prepare 
their  heart,  thou  wilt  cause  thine  ear  to  hear  : 

To  judge  the  fatherless  and  the  oppressed,  that  man  which  is  of  the 
earth  may  be  terrible  no  more. 

The  title^  to  the  ninth  psalm  declares  it  to  have  been  written 
by  David,  and  no  doubt  the  title  is  intended  to  apply  to  the 
tenth  psalm  also,  for  these  psalms  are  in  one  vein.  But  the 
situation  does  not  at  all  suit  the  time  of  David  ;  the  powerful 
wicked  men  who  are  not  Israelites,   and  whose  downfall  the 

^  Concerning  the  titles  to  the  psalms,  and  the  reasons  for  holding  them  to  be 
entirely  untrustworthy,  see  the  second  Appendix  to  the  present  chapter. 


842  THE    RESTORATION    OF   JERUSALEM:  [ch. 

psalmist  desires,  are  in  close  neighbourhood  to  the  people  of 
God,  with  ready  access  to  their  villages  (Psalm  x.  8) ;  the  struggle 
has  much  of  the  aspect  of  civil  war.  Now  this  feature  was  not 
in  the  least  present  in  the  wars  of  David  against  PhiUstines, 
Moabites,  Ammonites,  and  Edomites ;  nor  could  David  in  those 
wars  have  truly  described  himself  as  needy,  poor,  and  meek. 
But  the  situation  is  exactly  that  which  (if  the  account  which 
I  am  giving  be  based  on  a  true  conception)  existed  in  Judaea 
and  Jerusalem,  when  the  exiles  from  Babylon  began  to  arrive 
there ;  they  were  needy  and  poor,  and  more  or  less  meek  ;  and 
they  hved  in  the  close  neighbourhood  of  powerful  enemies. 
This  is  exactly  the  situation  described  in  the  ninth  and  tenth 
psalms. 

Precisely  the  same  situation  is  described  in  the  fifty-ninth 
psalm ;  the  enemies  there  are  heathen,  but  heathen  in  close 
proximity  to  the  people  of  God.     Thus  the  psalmist  cries  (verse  5)  : 

O  Jehovah,  God  of  hosts,  the  God  of  Israel,  arise  to  visit  all  the 
heathen  :    be  not  merciful  to  any  wicked  trajisgressors. 

They  return  at  evening,  they  make  a  noise  like  a  dog,  and  go  round 
about  the  city. 

And  again : 

Slay  them  not,  lest  my  people  forget :  scatter  them  by  thy  power,  and 
bring  them  down,  O  Lord  our  sliield. 

That  psalm,  again,  is  in  its  title  ascribed  to  David  :  "  when 
Saul  sent,"  so  the  title  runs,  "  and  they  watched  the  house 
to  kill  him."  But  whatever  might  be  the  case  with  some  of 
the  servants  of  Saul,  such  as  the  Edomite  Doeg,  the  contest 
between  Saul  and  David  was  a  contest  between  Israelite  and 
Israelite  :  the  psalm  of  which  I  am  writing  brings  before  us 
a  contest  between  heathen  and  Israelite,  close  neighbours  to 
each  other.  There  was  no  time  in  the  history  of  Israel  (at  any 
rate  from  the  time  of  Samuel  onwards)  when  such  close  neigh- 
bourhood and  yet  vehement  antipathy  was  possible  except  when 
the  return  from  the  Babylonian  exile  was  in  its  beginnings. 

Take  another  psalm,  the  forty-fourth.  Here  we  find  the 
people  of  God  discomfited  before  their  enemies,  and  yet  main- 
taining in  the  strongest  terms  their  own  religious  faithfulness. 
Thus  the  psalmist  cries  out  and  complains  to  God  : 

Btit  now  thou  hast  cast  us  off,  and  brought  us  to  dishonour,  and  goest 
not  forth  with  our  hosts. 

Thou  makost  us  turn  back  from  the  adversary :  and  they  which  hate 
U9  spoil  for  themselves. 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  343 

Thou  hast  given  us  hke  sheep  appointed  for  meat ;  and  hast  scattered 
us  among  the  nations. .  .  . 

All  this  is  come  upon  us  ;  yet  have  we  not  forgotten  thee,  neither 
have  we  dealt  falsely  in  thy  covenant. . .  . 

If  we  have  forgotten  the  name  of  ovir  God,  or  spread  forth  our  hands 
to  a  strange  god  ; 

Shall  not  God  search  this  out  ?  for  he  knoweth  the  secrets  of  the  heart. 

Yea,  for  thy  sake  we  are  killed  all  the  day  long;  and  are  counted  as 
sheep  for  the  slaughter. 

Such  confident  assertion  of  innocence,  combined  with  acknow- 
ledged external  misfortune,  would  have  been  impossible  at  any 
period  before  the  Babylonian  captivity  ;  but  it  exactly  suits 
the  position  of  the  exiles  who  had  returned  from  Babylon,  in 
their  first  weakness  before  the  surrounding  nations.  It  should 
be  noticed  that  in  none  of  these  psalms  is  any  royal  tyrant 
mentioned  (the  "  mighty  man  "  of  the  fifty-second  psalm  is 
hardly  royal) ;  and  hence  these  psalms  give  no  support  to  the 
idea,  which  some  have  favoured,  that  some  of  the  psalms  in  this 
early  part  of  the  collection  are  of  the  date  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes 
(about  170  B.C.). 

It  will  be  right  here  to  refer  to  those  psalms,  among  the 
eighty-nine  which  are  my  present  theme,  which  have  an  air 
of  belonging  to  the  reigns  of  David  or  of  Solomon ;  though  they 
would  at  any  rate  be  expanded  from  anything  written  in  those 
early  days.  I  have  already  mentioned  the  eighteenth  and  fifty- 
first  ;  to  these  may  be  added  the  twenty-first,  the  forty-fifth, 
the  forty-eighth,  the  sixty-eighth,  and  the  seventy-second.  I 
would  not  speak  dogmatically  ;  but  at  any  rate  I  exclude  these 
psalms  from  the  remarks  which  I  am  making  about  the  first 
eighty-nine  psalms  ;  the  tone  of  them  is  too  much  the  tone 
of  triumph  (except  in  the  case  of  the  fifty-first  psalm).  On  the 
other  hand,  the  mention  of  "  the  king  "  in  the  sixty-first  and 
sixty-third  psalms  does  not  seem  to  me  to  exclude  it  from  the 
period  which  I  have  named  ;  for  an  ideal  king  was  certainly 
among  the  conceptions  of  the  restored  Jews  (and  this  might 
even  warrant  the  placing  of  the  seventy-second  psalm  in  the 
period  of  which  I  am  now  treating). 

But  I  come  to  another  point — the  mention  of  the  temple 
in  these  eighty -nine  psalms.  It  is  mentioned  very  distinctly 
in  Psalms  v.  xi.  (it  may  possibly  be  metaphorical  here,  but  I 
think  not),  xxiii.  xxvi.  xxvii.  xxix.  xxxvi.  xlii.  lii.  Iv.  Ixv.  Ixvi. 
Ixix.  Ixxiv.  Ixxix.  Ixxxiv. ;  either  simply  as  the  temple,  or  as 
the  house  of  God,  or  (in  Psalm  Ixxiv.)  by  expressions  equally 


344  THE    RESTORATION    OF    JERUSALEM:  [ch. 

clear.  If  somewhat  vaguer  expressions  ("  thy  holy  hill,"  "  thy 
holy  oracle,"  &c.)  are  added,  we  have  mention  of  it  in  Psalms  iii. 
XV.  XX.  xxiv.  xxviii.  xliii.  Ixiii.  Ixxiii.  Ixxx.  (in  the  expression 
"  thou  that  dwellest  between  the  cherubim  ").  It  will  be  con- 
ceded that,  when  these  psalms  were  written,  there  was  a  temple  at 
Jerusalem ;  which  implies,  if  the  chronology  which  I  am  following 
be  correct,  that  there  was  a  temple  built  shortly  after  the  earliest 
return  of  the  exiles  in  the  time  of  Cyrus,  which  was  destroyed 
some  half  a  century  later ;  the  destruction  being  mentioned 
certainly  in  the  seventy-fourth  psalm,  probably  in  the  seventy- 
ninth  (though  it  is  possible  to  take  the  seventy-ninth  psalm  as 
referring  to  the  destruction  by  Nebuchadnezzar). 

And  now  let  me  ask  :  Is  it  improbable  that  there  should 
be  such  a  temple,  not  referred  to  in  the  direct  history  ?  Is  it 
not  certain  that  the  Jews  would  erect  a  temple,  if  they  could 
possibly  do  so  ?  It  is  true  that  in  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes 
Longimanus,  they  were  prohibited  from  rebuilding  the  temple 
(Ezra  iv.  7-24)  ;  but  then  they  had  tried  to  combine  it  with 
rebuilding  the  walls  ;  it  does  not  follow  that  objection  would 
have  been  made  to  their  rebuilding  the  temple,  if  that  had  been 
all.  The  walls  were  the  offence;  and  hence  when  royal  favour 
came  to  them  at  last  in  the  reign  of  Darius  Nothus,  they  did 
as  a  matter  of  fact  rebuild  the  temple  before  they  rebuilt  the 
walls.  If,  again,  it  be  said,  Why  have  we  no  historical  record 
of  this  brief-lived  temple  ?  the  answer  is  that  the  Jews  never 
did  like  recording  in  detail  the  times  of  their  adversity.  We 
have  absolutely  no  historical  record  of  what  they  were  doing 
during  the  Babylonian  captivity  ;  and  the  times  immediately 
succeeding  to  the  captivity  had  too  much  that  was  distressing 
to  be  a  pleasing  subject  of  record.  At  the  same  time,  they  were 
not  voiceless  (if  ray  view  be  correct)  during  the  times  immediately 
succeeding  to  the  captivity  ;  they  could  sing  their  troubles 
and  their  hopes ;  whereas  during  the  actual  captivity  they 
had  been  voiceless,  or  nearly  so.  Conflict,  even  if  sometimes 
disastrous,  rekindled  the  energies  of  their  soul,  so  that  they 
could  utter  their  feelings  in  words. 

I  have  said  that  the  reign  of  Xerxes  (485-465  B.C.)  was  not 
a  happy  time  for  the  Jews  ;  and  though  the  book  of  Esther 
(taken  in  connexion  with  the  historical  feast  of  Purim)  no  doubt 
truly  represents  a  (certain  escape  of  the  .Jews  from  imminent  peril 
at  that  time,  we  must  also  be  of  opinion  that  that  book  exaggerates 
the  triumph  of  the  Jews  over  their  enemies.     Such  exaggeration 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  345 

is  natural  to  man,  and  was  particularly  natural  to  the  Jews, 
as  we  may  see  from  the  book  of  Judith  (and  also  from  certain 
parts  of  the  books  of  Chronicles  to  which  I  have  before  referred). 
However,  some  successes  the  Jews  must  have  had  ;  in  the 
long  conflict  which  they  were  waging,  there  would  be  moments 
of  encouragement  even  before  the  turn  of  the  tide  in  their  favour, 
which  took  place  in  the  reign  of  Darius  Nothus  ;  and  the  sixty- 
sixth  psalm  contains  a  reference  to  the  exile,  with  an  interesting 
train  of  ethical  thought,  showing  that  the  Jews  had  profited 
by  their  misfortunes,  without  any  admixture  of  despondency. 
Here  are  some  verses  from  it : 

For  thou,  O  God,  hast  proved  us ;  thou  hast  tried  us,  as  silver  is  tried. 

Thou  broughtest  us  into  the  net ;  thou  layedst  a  sore  burden  upon 
our  loins. 

Thou  hast  caused  men  to  ride  over  our  heads ;  we  went  through  fire 
and  through  water  ;    but  thou  broughtest  us  out  into  abundance. 

The  position  of  that  psalm  would  seem  to  indicate  that  it 
was  written  in  the  early  years  after  the  exile  was  over ;  and 
there  is  no  real  reason  against  our  thinking  so.  The  temple, 
and  sacrifices,  are  referred  to  in  it ;  yet  the  authors  of  these 
psalms,  whoever  they  may  have  been,  had  no  slavish  devotion 
to  sacrifices.  The  fiftieth  psalm  is  as  emphatic  an  assertion 
of  the  superiority  of  prayer  and  thanksgiving  over  sacrifice, 
as  anything  in  Isaiah  or  Micah.  So  Ukewise  is  the  sixty-ninth 
psalm  : 

I  will  praise  the  name  of  God  with  a  song,  and  will  magnify  him  with 
thanksgiving. 

And  it  shall  please  Jehovah  better  than  an  ox,  or  a  biillock  that  hath 
horns  and  hoofs. 

None   the  less   was   the   author   of  that  psalm   enthusiastic 

on  behalf  of  the  temple.     "  The  zeal  of  thy  house,"  he  writes, 

"  hath  eaten  me  up."     Moreover,  in  the  midst  of  all  suffering, 

he  looks  forward  to  the  time  when  the  imperfect  restoration 

of  God's  people  which  then  had  been  attained  should  be  made 

complete  and  full  : 

For  God  will  save  Zion,  and  build  the  cities  of  Judah  ;  and  they 
shall  abide  there,  and  have  it  in  possession. 

I  do  not  think  that  any  one  who  reads  the  psalms  carefully 
will  doubt  that  their  order  is  in  the  main  chronological ;  there 
may  be  exceptions  to  this,  and  the  more  ancient  elements  in  the 
book,  those  which  came  down  from  the  reigns  of  David  or  Solomon, 
would  naturally  interfere  with  the  general  sequence  ;    but  on 


346  THE    RESTORATION    OF    JERUSALEM:  [ch. 

the  whole  the  psalms  down  to  the  eighty-ninth  inclusive  show 
the  Jews  at  the  time  of  their  severest  struggle  with  adverse 
circumstances ;  from  the  ninetieth  psalm  onwards  there  is  distinct 
recovery.  All  this  is  in  favour  of  the  view  that  I  am  here  pro- 
pounding, that  the  destruction  of  the  temple,  described  in  the 
seventy-fourth  and  seventy-ninth  psalms,  is  the  destruction  of  a 
post-captivity  temple,  earUer  than  that  of  Zerubbabel.  There 
is  Uttle  doubt  of  this,  I  think,  as  far  as  the  seventy-fourth  psalm 
is  concerned.  The  author  of  that  psalm  says  :  "  We  see  not 
our  signs ;  there  is  no  more  any  prophet " ;  a  complaint  which 
would  not  have  been  true  when  the  temple  of  Solomon  was 
burnt  by  the  soldiers  of  Nebuchadnezzar.  Nor  were  there  at 
that  time  synagogues,  which  are  referred  to  in  the  original  Hebrew 
of  this  psalm  (though  not  in  the  Septuagint  version  of  it). 

The  eighty-ninth  psalm,  the  last  of  those  with  which  I  have 
so  far  been  dealing,  is  a  sad  expostulation  with  God  for  his  delay 
in  coming  to  the  relief  of  his  servants;  yet  not  a  faithless  expostula- 
tion, or  in  any  way  a  denial  of  the  past  sins  of  Israel;  still,  an 
expostulation.  We  may,  without  any  improbability,  suppose  it 
written  in  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes  Longimanus  ;  when  everything 
seemed  at  a  standstill ;  and  though  those  incessant  attacks,  which 
had  wearied  the  Jews  on  their  first  return  to  Judaea,  no  longer 
went  on,  still  nothing  seemed  positively  gained  :  hope  had  no 
tangible  ground  to  rest  on.  But  a  better  day  was  soon  to  dawn, 
and  very  soon  we  shall  no  longer  be  dependent  on  the  psalms 
as  our  only  landmarks  of  history. 

Yet  I  must  linger  a  little  longer  upon  the  psalms.  The  eighty- 
fourth  psalm  cannot  be  in  its  right  place  ;  but  it  is  not  easy 
to  say  whether  it  should  be  earlier  or  later  than  where  we  find 
it.  But  the  eighty-fifth  psalm  is  the  true  introduction  to  the 
happier  state  of  things  ;  its  proper  place  would  be  after  the 
eighty-ninth  psalm,  and  before  the  ninetieth.  It  deserves  to 
bo  quoted  in  its  entirety  : 

Jehovah,  thou  hast  been  favovirable  unto  thy  \an<\ :  thou  hast  brought 
back  the  captivity  of  Jacob. 

Thou  hast  forgiven  the  iniquity  of  thy  people,  thou  hast  covered  all 
their  sin. 

Thou  hfust  taken  away  all  thy  wrath:  thou  hast  turned  thyself  from 
the  lierceness  of  thine  anger. 

Turn  us,  O  (lod  of  our  salvation,  and  cause  tliine  indignation  against 
us  to  cease. 

Wilt  thou  be  angry  with  us  for  ever  ?  wilt  thou  draw  out  thine 
anger  to  all  generations  ? 

Wilt  thou  not  quicken  us  again,  that  thy  people  may  rejoice  in  thee  ? 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  347 

Show  us  thy  mercy,  Jehovah,  and  grant  us  thy  salvation. 

I  will  hear  what  Jehovah  our  God  will  speak ;  for  he  will  speak  peace 
unto  his  people,  and  to  his  saints ;  but  let  them  not  turn  again  to  folly. 

Surely  his  salvation  is  nigh  them  that  fear  him,  that  glory  may  dwell 
in  our  land. 

Mercy  and  truth  are  met  together ;  righteousness  and  pea<je  have 
kissed  each  other. 

Truth  springeth  up  out  of  the  earth  ;  and  righteousness  hath  looked 
down  from  heaven. 

Yea,  Jehovah  shall  give  that  which  is  good,  and  our  land  shall  yield 
her  increase. 

Righteousness  shall  go  before  him,  and  shall  set  us  in  the  way  of  his  steps. 

Can  there  be  a  more  beautiful  expression  of  penitence,  hope, 
and  trust,  without  any  undue  confidence  or  boasting,  than  this  ? 
We  may  conceive  of  it  as  the  immediate  prelude  to  the  return 
of  Zerubbabel,  with  the  full  favour  of  the  Persian  monarch, 
Darius  Nothus.  To  this  return  I  now  come,  but  let  me  make 
one  parenthetical  remark  first.  It  is  the  Jews  who  had  returned 
to  Jerusalem  of  whom  I  have  been  speaking  throughout  this 
chapter  ;  but  we  must  not  forget  that  there  were  Jews  remaining 
at  Babylon,  and  also  in  other  parts  of  the  Persian  empire,  who 
were  not  to  be  despised  or  censured  as  recreants,  but  retained 
in  full  the  clear  faith  of  Abraham,  of  Moses,  and  of  the  prophets. 
These  Jews  had  literary  opportunities  much  exceeding  those 
of  their  brethren  in  Judaea  and  Jerusalem,  who  were  battUng 
for  their  very  existence,  and  whose  only  hterary  work  was  breath- 
ing out  their  souls  in  lyrical  psalms.  The  Jews  in  Babylonia 
were  called  to  quite  another  kind  of  work.  They  had,  as  far 
as  we  can  tell,  a  fairly  quiet  existence  ;  and  they  set  themselves 
to  gather  into  one  narrative  the  past  history  of  the  Israelite 
people.  The  past  glories  of  Israel,  the  intercourse  of  Jehovah 
with  his  people,  were  never  out  of  their  minds  ;  and  they  set 
themselves  to  record  it  aU — a  hterary  work  of  the  greatest  compass. 
They  had  plenty  of  materials  before  them,  for  Israel  had  always 
been  a  literary  people  ;  and  slowly  now  began  to  be  constructed 
in  their  present  form  that  long  series  of  books,  Genesis,  Exodus, 
Leviticus,  Numbers,  Deuteronomy,  Joshua,  Judges,  Ruth,  the 
books  of  Samuel,  the  books  of  Kings.  With  the  second  book 
of  Kings,  with  the  narrative  of  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem 
and  the  beginning  of  the  Babylonian  exile,  this  history  terminated  ; 
the  Jewish  historians  did  not  care  to  go  beyond  that  point ; 
the  glories  of  Israel  came  to  an  end  when  Israel  was  carried 
away  from  the  land  which  God  had  given  them;  the  years  of 
shame  and  punishment  might  fitly  be  buried  in  silence.     This- 


348  THE    RESTORATION   OF   JERUSALEM:  [oh. 

great  historical  work  must  have  been  completed  some  time  in 
the  fifth  century,  we  do  not  know  exactly  when. 

But  it  is  to  the  history  of  Zerubbabel  and  his  successors 
that  I  am  coming  now,  and  for  this  there  are  needed  quite  a 
different  set  of  historical  documents  ;  the  books  of  Ezra  and 
Nehemiah  ;  the  first  book  of  Esdras  (the  first  of  those  books 
which  are  called  the  Apocrypha) ;  and  in  due  course  the  Antiqui- 
ties of  Josephus,  book  xi.  cc.  7  and  8  :  and  with  all  these 
must  be  compared  the  prophecies  of  Haggai  and  Zechariah, 
which  relate  not  only  to  the  rebuilding  of  the  temple  by  Zerub- 
babel, but  also  (in  Zechariah 's  prophecies)  to  the  subsequent 
history  ;  and  lastly,  the  Aramaic  papyri  recently  discovered 
at  Assuan  in  Egypt  must  be  placed  in  their  proper  relation 
to  the  authorities  previously  mentioned,  which  have  been  known 
from  time  immemorial.  In  the  fitting  together  of  all  these 
diverse  authorities  some  skill  is  necessary,  for  to  bring  them 
into  agreement  with  one  another  is  not  altogether  plain  sailing; 
but  I  shall  hope  to  reserve  the  most  difficult  arguments  for  the 
Appendix  ;  in  the  present  chapter  I  will  try  to  give  plain  narrative. 

One  remark  I  may  make  at  starting  about  the  first  book 
of  Esdras.  It  is  probably  the  translation  of  a  lost  Hebrew 
original ;  and  Sir  Henry  Howorth  has  ably  argued^  that  it  is 
of  higher  value  than  our  book  of  Ezra.  I  cannot  go  quite  so 
far  ;  but  it  seems  to  me  more  nearly  equal  in  authority  to  the 
book  of  Ezra  than  is  generally  supposed.  And  there  is  this 
very  noteworthy  point  in  it.  The  inference  which  every  one 
would  draw  at  once  from  the  book  of  Ezra,  if  chapters  ii.  1-iv.  5 
were  excluded  from  that  book,  that  Zerubbabel  rebuilt  the  temple 
during  the  reign  of  Darius  Nothus,  or  between  the  years  422- 
418  B.C.,  is  much  more  immediately  to  be  drawn  from  the  first 
book  of  Esdras;  for  in  the  first  book  of  Esdras  Zerubbabel  is 
stated  to  have  returned  from  Babylon  to  Jerusalem  for  the  first 
time  in  the  reign  of  Darius,  and  the  sequence  of  the  kings  in  the 
book  makes  it  clear  that  this  is  Darius  Nothus.  Notwith- 
standing this,  the  writer  of  the  first  book  of  Esdras  had  not 
been  able  wholly  to  escape  the  influence  of  the  belief  which 
connected  Zerubbabel  with  the  return  under  Cyrus,  and  this 
behef  dominates  the  latter  part  of  his  fifth  chapter  (from  verse  47 

•  The  obsorvalions  on  this  Hubject  by  Sir  Henry  Howorth  (whose  great  merit 
I  am  glatl  to  see  rc^oofjiii.Mcd  by  the  American  I'rofossor  Torrey)  are  to  be  found  in 
the  Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Jiihlical  Archaology,  vols.  xxin.  and  xxiv.  and  in  the 
columns  of  the  Academy  and  of  the  Thinker  (which  last  I  have  not  seen)  and  possibly 
in  other  places. 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  349 

onwards)  and  is  implied  in  a  single  verse  (the  18th)  of  his  sixth 
chapter.  I  follow,  however,  the  main  tenor  of  the  first  book 
of  Esdras,  which  also  is  the  true  purport  of  the  book  of  Ezra. 

It  is  probable  that,  even  towards  the  close  of  the  reign  of 
Artaxerxes  Longimanus,  there  had  been  some  softening  on  the 
part  of  the  chief  statesmen  of  Persia  towards  the  struggling 
Jewish  settlers  in  Jerusalem  and  Judaea.  But  it  was  in  the 
first  year  of  the  king  who  followed  this  Artaxerxes  (i.e.  Darius 
Nothus)  that  Zerubbabel  and  his  large  company  departed  from 
Babylon  and  came  to  Jerusalem,  and  it  was  in  the  second  year 
of  this  Darius  that  the  rebuilding  of  the  temple  began^.  It 
would  seem  that  even  then,  the  hostile  neighbours  of  the  Jews 
made  a  last  effort  to  prevent  the  rebuilding  of  it.  But  the 
hostility  was  much  less  bitter  than  it  had  been  ;  and  we  are  told 
that  the  actual  decree  of  Cyrus,  permitting  the  rebuilding  of 
the  temple,  was  found  by  king  Darius  at  Ecbatana,  and  no 
more  obstacle  was  put  in  the  way  of  the  Jewish  rebuilders. 

And  now  we  come  to  undisputed  contemporary  authority 
as  to  what  happened  during  the  rebuilding  ;  the  authority  of 
the  prophets  Haggai  and  Zechariah.  Haggai  comes  slightly 
the  first.  We  learn  from  him  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixth 
month  of  the  second  year  of  Darius,  the  rebuilding  of  the  temple 
had  not  been  started,  the  Jewish  nobles  having  been  occupied  in 
repairing  and  adorning  their  own  houses.  Let  me  quote  the  passage : 

Thus  speaketh  Jehovah  Sabaoth,  saying.  This  people  sayj  It  is  not 
the  time  for  us  to  come,  the  time  for  Jehovah's  house  to  be  bmlt.  Then 
came  the  word  of  Jehovah  by  Haggai  the  prophet,  saying.  Is  it  a  time 
for  you  yourselves  to  dwell  La  your  cieled  houses,  while  this  house  lieth 
waste  ? .  .  .  Thus  saith  Jehovah  Sabaoth  :  Consider  your  ways.  Go  up 
to  the  mountain,  and  bring  wood,  and  build  the  house  ;  and  I  will  take 
pleasure  in  it,  and  I  will  be  glorified,  saith  Jehovah.  Ye  looked  for  much, 
and,  lo,  it  came  to  Uttle  ;  and  when  ye  brought  it  home,  I  did  blow  it  away. 
Why  ?  saith  Jehovah  Sabaoth.  Because  of  mine  house  that  lieth  waste, 
while  ye  run  every  man  to  his  own  house.     Haggai  i.  2-4,  7-9. 

Observe,  Haggai  does  not  refer  to  any  help  in  money  or 
materials  which  Darius  was  supplying  to  the  Jews ;  they  are 
themselves  to  go  up  to  the  mountain,  and  bring  wood  from  thence 
for  the  temple  structure.  And  though  it  may  possibly  be  true 
that  Darius  did  at  a  later  date  give  material  help  to  the  Jews 
in  their  rebuilding,  as  would  be  inferred  from  Ezra  vi.  8,  still 
we  must  not  confidently  affirm  this  ;  the  compiler  of  the  books 
of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  was,   as  I  have  before  remarked,  not 

1  Ezra  iv.  24 ;    1  Esdras  iv.  58-v.  3,  vi.  1,  2. 


360  THE    RESTORATION   OF   JERUSALEM:  [ch. 

above  the  use  of  imagination  to  decorate  his  history,  and  it  would 
seem  to  him  (as  to  Josephus  at  a  later  time)  that  the  favour 
shown  by  Persian  kings  was  a  real  honour  to  the  Jews  ;  and 
in  view  of  the  silence  of  both  Haggai  and  Zechariah,  I  hardly 
believe  in  this  royal  grant. 

The  second  chapter  of  Haggai  contains  a  remarkable  passage. 
The  glory  of  Solomon's  temple  wa«  a  great  tradition  among 
the  Jews  ;  and  the  more  recent  temple,  the  temple  of  the  first 
half  of  our  book  of  Psalms,  was  blended  in  memory  with  Solomon's 
temple.  Now  some  of  the  Jews  who  saw  Zerubbabel's  new 
structure  beginning  to  rise  made  disparaging  remarks  on  its 
insignificance.  As  the  rebuilding  had  not  been  a  full  month 
in  progress,  the  new  structure  was  not  likely  to  show  much 
splendour ;  but  Haggai's  reply  to  these  murmurers  must  be 
quoted  : 

Who  is  left  among  you  that  saw  this  house  in  its  former  glory  ?  and 
how  do  ye  see  it  now  ?  is  it  not  in  your  eyes  as  nothing  ?  Yet  now 
be  strong,  O  Zerubbabel,  saith  Jehovah  ;  and  be  strong,  O  Joshua,  son 
of  Jehozadak,  the  high  priest,  and  be  strong,  all  ye  people  of  the  land, 
saith  Jehovah,  and  work  ;  for  I  am  with  you,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts, 
according  to  the  word  that  I  covenanted  with  you  when  ye  came  out 
of  Egypt,  and  my  spirit  abode  among  you  :  fear  ye  not.  For  thus  saith 
the  Lord  of  hosts  :  Yet  once,  it  is  a  little  while,  and  I  will  shake  the  heavens, 
and  the  earth,  and  the  sea,  and  the  dry  land  ;  and  I  will  shake  all  nations, 
and  the  desirable  things  of  all  nations  shall  come,  and  I  will  fill  this  house 
with  glory,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts.  The  silver  is  mine,  and  the  gold  is 
mine,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts.  The  latter  glory  of  this  house  shall  be 
greater  than  the  former,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts  :  and  in  this  place  will 
I  give  peace,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts. 

If,  as  I  believe,  these  words  were  written  in  422  B.C.,  it  was 
not  impossible  that  some  might  be  present  who  remembered 
the  temple  whose  destruction  is  commemorated  in  the  seventy- 
fourth  psalm,  which  event  I  have  placed  in  the  reign  of  Xerxes, 
perhaps  in  483  B.C.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  the 
temple  so  destroyed  was  a  very  magnificent  one ;  it  had  "  carved 
work  "  (Psalm  Ixxiv.  7) ;  but  it  was  no  doubt  exalted  in  memory, 
and  in  the  deep  darkness  of  that  period  many  were  likely  to  think 
that  this  temple  was  Solomon's  temple,  so  famed  in  tradition. 
Wo  nuisl  not  suppose  that  the  Jews  who  murmured  dissatisfaction 
at  the  small  beginnings  of  Zerubbabel's  temple  had  any  accurate 
measure  of  comparison  with  the  temple  which  they  may  have 
seen  in  their  boyhood.  Indeed,  though  Haggai  says,  "  Who  is 
left  among  you  (hat  saw  this  house  in  its  former  glory  ?  "  it  does 
not  follow  that  any  of  those  whom  he  addressed  had  actually 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  351 

seen  that  former  house.  Haggai  would  not  necessarily  know 
their  history  ;  and  a  depreciatory  comparison  of  the  present 
with  the  past  was  in  any  case  natural  enough. 

I  have  quoted  the  most  remarkable  passages  in  the  prophet 
Haggai,  but  I  may  add  to  these  his  last  verse,  written  when 
the  rebuilding  of  the  temple  had  been  three  months  in  progress, 
because  it  shows  the  exalted  hopes  which  were  set  on  Zerubbabel, 
as  the  descendant  of  the  ancient  kings  of  Judah  : 

In  that  day,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts,  will  I  take  thee,  O  Zerubbabel, 
my  servant,  the  son  of  Shealtiel,  saith  Jehovah,  and  I  will  make  thee 
as  a  signet ;    for  I  have  chosen  thee,  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts. 

The  prophecies  of  Haggai  cover  a  period  of  nearly  four  months  ; 
the  prophecies  of  Zechariah  begin  about  a  month  before  those 
of  Haggai  terminate,  and  extend  certainly  over  more  than  four 
years  ;  but  how  much  longer  we  cannot  say,  owing  to  the  absence 
of  dates  in  the  latter  part  of  the  book.  There  is  a  quaintness 
of  style  in  him  throughout ;  but  his  thoughts  are  sometimes 
of  great  beauty  ;  and  he  is  distinguished  among  all  the  prophets 
for  the  quiet  assurance  with  which  he  regards  the  divine  approval 
as  resting  on  Jerusalem  and  on  the  Jews,  Thus  in  his  first 
chapter  he  represents  Jehovah  as  saying  : 

I  am  jealous  for  Jerusalem  and  for  Zion  with  a  great  jealousy.  And 
I  am  very  sore  displeased  with  the  nations  that  are  at  ease  :  for  I  was 
but  a  little  displeased,  and  they  helped  on  the  affliction.  Therefore 
thus  saith  Jehovah  :  I  am  returned  to  Jerusalem  with  mercies  ;  my  house 
shall  be  bmlt  in  it,  saith  Jehovah  Sabaoth. 

Zechariah,  like  Haggai,  is  full  of  confidence  in  Zerubbabel ; 
in  his  fourth  chapter  he  writes  thus  : 

This  is  the  word  of  Jehovah  unto  Zerubbabel  saying,  Not  by  might, 
nor  by  power,  but  by  my  spirit,  saith  Jehovah  Sabaoth.  Who  art  thou, 
O  great  mountain  ?  before  Zerubbabel  thou  shalt  become  a  plain  :  and 
he  shall  bring  forth  the  headstone  with  shoutings  of  Grace,  grace  unto  it. 
Moreover  the  word  of  Jehovah  came  unto  me,  saying,  The  hands  of 
Zerubbabel  have  laid  the  foundation  of  this  house  ;  his  hands  shall  also 
finish  it ;  and  thou  shalt  know  that  Jehovah  Sabaoth  hath  sent  me  unto 
you.     For  who  hath  despised  the  day  of  small  things  ? 

Not  less  enthusiastic  is  Zechariah  over  Joshua  the  high  priest ; 
twice  over  does  he  hail  him  by  the  title  of  "  the  Branch  "  (iii.  8 
and  vi.  12)  ;  and  adds  that  "  he  shall  build  the  temple  of  Jehovah, 
and  he  shall  bear  the  glory,  and  shall  sit  and  rule  upon  his  throne  ; 
and  he  shall  be  a  priest  upon  his  throne  "  ;  and  Zechariah  further 
says,  plainly  referring  to  Zerubbabel  and  Joshua,  "  The  counsel 
of  peace  shall  be  between  them  both." 


362  THE    RESTORATION    OF   JERUSALEM:  [ch. 

From  this  mention  of  "  the  Branch*,"  we  see  that  Zechariah 
possessed  a  copy  of  part  (at  any  rate)  of  Jeremiah's  prophecies ; 
for  Jeremiah  had  twice  spoken  of  "a  righteous  Branch*  "  as 
ruling  in  Judah,  and  as  saving  Judah  and  Israel  (Jeremiah  xxiii.  6, 
xxxiii.  15,  16).  From  Jeremiah  also  then  must  Zechariah  have 
derived  that  number  of  seventy  years,  during  which  Jehovah 
had  been  angry  with  his  people ;  it  is  a  round  number,  and  not 
meant  to  be  exact  (compare  Zechariah  i.  12  with  vii.  6).  It 
is  to  be  admitted  that  Zechariah  wrote  carelessly;  a  prophet 
himself,  he  preferred  setting  down  the  number  which  had  prophetic 
authorisation,  and  which  was  familiar  to  him ;  he  had  no  access 
to  chronology,  by  which  the  real  number  (much  exceeding  seventy) 
might  have  been  found  2.  To  the  mass  of  the  Jews  the  time  was 
simply  "  these  so  many  years,"  during  which  they  had  fasted 
in  sorrow. 

But  now  Zechariah  bids  them  recover ;  and  beautiful  are 
the  phrases  in  which  he  announces  this.  Thus  in  his  eighth 
chapter  he  writes  : 

Thus  saith  Jehovah  Sabaoth  :  There  shall  yet  old  men  and  old  women 
dwell  in  the  streets  of  Jenasalem,  every  man  with  his  staff  in  his  hand 
for  very  age.  And  the  streets  of  the  city  shall  be  full  of  boys  and  girls 
playing  in  the  streets  thereof.  Thus  saith  the  Lord  of  hosts:  If  it  be 
marvellous  in  the  eyes  of  the  remnant  of  this  people  in  those  days,  should 
it  also  be  marvellous  in  mine  eyes  ? 

And  again  : 

The  word  of  Jehovah  Sabaoth  came  unto  me,  saying,  Thus  saith 
the  Lord  of  hosts  :  The  fast  of  the  fourth  month,  and  the  fast  of  the 
fifth,  and  the  fa.st  of  the  seventh,  and  the  fast  of  the  tenth,  shall  be  to 
the  house  of  Judah  joy  and  gladness,  and  cheerful  feasts  ;  therefore 
love  truth  and  peace.  Thus  saith  Jehovah  Sabaoth  :  It  shall  yet  come 
to  pass,  that  there  shall  come  peoples,  and  the  inhabitants  of  many  cities : 
and  the  inhabitants  of  one  city  shall  go  to  another,  saying.  Let  us  go 
speedily  to  entreat  the  favour  of  Jehovah,  and  to  seek  the  Lord  of  hosts: 
I  will  go  also.  Yea,  many  peoples  and  strong  nations  shall  come  to  seek 
Jehovah  Sabaoth  in  Jerusalem,  and  to  entreat  the  favour  of  Jehovah. 
Thus  saith  Jehovah  Sabaoth:  In  those  days  it  shall  come  to  pass,  that 
ten  men  shall  take  hold,  out  of  all  the  languages  of  the  nations,  shall 
even  take  hold  of  the  skirt  of  him  that  is  a  Jew,  saying,  We  will  go  with 
you,  for  we  have  heard  that  God  is  with  you. 

Wliat  a  conversion  of  mourning  into  joy,  of  humiliation 
into  the  far-reaching  vistas  of  hope,  is  implied  in  these  passages  ! 

*  The  Hebrew  word  for  "  Branch  "  is  the  same  in  both  prophets. 

*  The  mention  of  "  seventy  yean*,"  like  the  mention  in  llaggai  of  some  who  may 
havo  seen  the  former  temple,  is  capable  of  being  nsetl  as  an  argument  against  my 
whole  chronological  sclieme.  I  think  I  have  explained  both  dilliculties ;  the  reader 
may  judge. 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  353 

Let  the  reader,  after  carefully  observing  the  purport  of  these 
passages  of  Zechariah,  turn  to  that  part  of  the  book  of  Psalms 
which  is  comprised  between  the  lOTth^  and  138th  inclusive, 
and  he  will  find  in  almost  all  these  (the  109th  psalm  excepted) 
the  same  kind  of  tone  which  animates  Zechariah ;  the  tone 
of  relief  after  affliction,  of  sorrow  for  past  transgressions,  of 
earnest  desire  to  do  right,  of  joyful  trust  in  God,  of  hope  for 
the  future.  One  verse  alone  out  of  these  psalms  I  will  quote 
here;    it  is  the  fourth  verse  of  the  138th  psalm  : 

All  the  kings  of  the  earth  shall  give  thee  thanks,  Jehovah,  for  they 
have  heard  the  words  of  thy  mouth. 

In  this  verse  the  universal  range  of  that  religion  which  the 
Jewish  nation  were  privileged  to  hold  and  to  preach  is  intimated 
as  clearly  as  in  the  last  passage  which  I  quoted  from  Zechariah. 
But  indeed  this  whole  series  of  psalms  should  be  read  side  by 
side  with  the  first  eight  chapters  of  Zechariah  ;  their  contents 
show  that  they  belong  to  the  same  period.  That  period,  more- 
over, was  the  period  of  highest  excellence  of  the  whole  Jewish 
nation  ;  there  were  greater  individuals  among  them  at  other 
times  ;   but  never  was  the  whole  nation  so  great  as  now. 

The  point  of  history  which  I  have  now  reached  is  illustrated 
in  a  remarkable  manner  by  the  Aramaic  papyri  which  were 
discovered  a  few  years  ago  (to  be  exact,  in  1907)  in  an  island 
of  the  Nile,  near  Assuan  in  Upper  Egypt.  We  learn  from  one 
of  these  papyri,  that  in  the  year  419  B.C.  (which  is  just  a  year 
later  than  the  date  of  the  last  passage  which  I  quoted  from 
the  prophet  Zechariah),  king  Darius  sent  to  instruct  the  Jews 
of  Egypt  as  to  the  manner  of  keeping  the  passover ;  an  act 
which  Eduard  Meyer  ^  (at  page  92  of  his  work  Der  Payyrusfund 
von  Elej)hantine)  justly  considers  most  remarkable.  Is  not  this 
well-ascertained  fact  a  strong  corroboration  of  the  statements 
in  the  first  book  of  Esdras,  that  the  Darius  who  came  after  one 
king  Artaxerxes  and  before  another  king  Artaxerxes  (and  who 
therefore  was  Darius  Nothus)  took  a  great  personal  interest 
in  the  Jews;  does  it  not  add  to  the  probability  that  it  was 
he  who  sent  Zerubbabel  to  rebuild  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  ? 

And  now  I  come  to  the  year  418  B.C.,  the  sixth  year  of  Darius 

^  This  splendid  psalm  (the  107th)  would  appear  to  commemorate  the  journey  of 
Zerubbabel  to  Jerusalem.  The  118th  psalm  may  probably  celebrate  the  dedication 
of  the  temple  by  Zerubbabel. 

2  I  must  not  imjilicate  this  distinguished  scholar  with  my  own  way  of  regarding 
the  history.  Meyer  takes  the  ordinary  view  that  Zerubbabel  (and  therefore  Haggai 
and  Zechariah)  lived  in  the  reign  of  Darius  son  of  Hystaspes  ;  and  therefore  a  century 
earlier  than  the  date  I  have  assigned  to  them. 

M.  D.  A.  23 


364  THE    RESTORATION    OF   JERUSALEM:  [CH. 

Nothus.  In  this  year  the  temple  which  had  been  begun  in  422 
B.C.,  was  completed  and  dedicated,  as  we  read  in  Ezra  vi.  15,  16. 
Following  our  book  of  Zechariah  in  its  proper  order,  we  come 
to  the  ninth  chapter ;  and  as  the  eighth  chapter  had  referred 
to  the  year  420  B.C.,  it  is  not  unnatural  that  the  ninth  chapter 
should  refer  to  the  year  418  B.C.  ;  and  so  from  its  contents 
I  infer  that  it  does.     Here  is  the  passage  which  I  mean  : 

Rejoice  greatly,  O  daughter  of  Zion  ;  shout,  O  daughter  of  Jerusalem ; 
behold,  thy  king  cometh  unto  thee  :  he  is  just,  and  having  salvation  : 
lowly,  and  riding  upon  an  ass,  even  upon  a  colt  the  foal  of  an  ass. 

Christian  readers  are  so  accustomed  to  give  a  Christian 
interpretation  to  these  words,  that  they  are  apt  to  forget  that 
the  prophet  who  wrote  them,  who  was  so  keenly  interested 
in  Jerusalem,  in  the  temple,  and  in  the  men  of  his  own  day, 
must  have  been  referring  to  contemporaries,  and  to  some  con- 
temporary event.  Were  there  not  contemporaries,  was  there 
not  a  contemporary  event,  likely  to  call  forth  the  words  that 
I  have  quoted  ?  Yes :  the  dedication  of  the  temple  was  such 
an  event ;  Zerubbabel  and  Joshua  (or  Jeshua — the  form  of  the 
name  varies)  were  such  persons.  I  have  already  quoted  from 
Zechariah  the  exalted  terms  in  which  he  speaks  of  Zerubbabel 
and  Joshua  :  I  do  not  doubt  that  it  is  Zerubbabel  whom  he  here 
speaks  of  as  "  thy  king  "  ;  for  Zerubbabel  was  a  descendant  of 
the  ancient  kings  of  Judah.  The  words  just  quoted  plainly  refer 
to  some  procession.  Would  not  a  procession  be  a  natural  pre- 
liminary to  the  dedication  of  the  temple  ?  Must  we  not  conclude, 
in  view  of  the  fact  that  all  the  preceding  chapters  of  Zechariah 
were  written  while  the  temple  was  being  rebuilt,  and  have  frequent 
references  to  that  rebuilding,  so  this  ninth  chapter  describes 
the  dedication  after  it  had  been  rebuilt  ?  That  is  the  natural 
sequence  of  the  prophecy,  and  I  know  no  reason  why  it  should 
not  be  regarded  as  the  true  one. 

But  this  ninth  chapter  of  Zechariah  contains  other  topics, 
most  natural  to  be  dwelt  on  at  the  time  of  the  consummation 
of  so  much  labour,  when  the  fruit  was  being  gathered  in  of  the 
years  of  long  endurance  and  faitlifulness.  .Judah  and  Epliraim 
or,  in  one  word,  Israel — are  declared  to  be  very  great  and  victorious 
among  the  peoples  of  the  earth.  Naturally  the  pro})het  does 
not  include  Persia  among  the  nations  in  comparison  with  which 
Judah  and  Israel  shine  out  as  preeminent  ;  for  l*ersia  was  the 
sovereign  countr}-  under  whose  protection  Judah  and  Ephraim 
alike  lived,  and  the  then  king  of  Persia  had  been  most  friendly 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  355 

to  the  Jews  :  but  all  the  other  neighbouring  countries — Tyre, 
Philistia,  Greece,  Assyria,  Egypt — are  mentioned  as  about  to 
dwindle  before  Israel.  The  mention  of  Greece  (Javan)  in  this 
connexion  is  especially  noticeable.  A  century  before  this  time, 
in  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Darius  son  of  Hystaspes,  Greece 
had  been  comparatively  Uttle  known  among  eastern  nations ; 
so  that  when  this  same  Darius  son  of  Hystaspes  heard  that  the 
Athenians  had  burned  the  city  of  Sardis,  he  asked,  "  Who  are 
the  Athenians  ?  "  But  in  the  reign  of  Darius  Nothus,  in  418  B.C., 
the  Athenians,  the  Spartans,  and  the  other  principal  Greek 
States,  were  known  to  be  warhke  and  powerful ;  not  without 
glory  had  the  great  battles  of .  Marathon,  Salamis,  and  Platsea 
been  fought  and  won.  So  Zechariah,  living  in  this  latter  reign, 
might  well  reckon  Greece  among  the  States  which  were  powerful 
and  yet  about  to  yield  to  the  united  strength  of  Judah  and 
Ephraim. 

But  what  did  Zechariah  mean  by  Ephraim  ?  Rather  let 
me  ask,  what  should  he  mean  by  it  but  the  people  inhabiting 
the  country  once  inhabited  by  the  northern  Israelites  ?  It 
may  be  said  as  an  objection  to  this,  that  the  people  who  in  the 
time  of  Zechariah  inhabited  that  country,  or  in  other  words 
the  Samaritans,  were  not  of  true  IsraeUte  blood  at  all,  and  were 
besides  consistent  enemies  of  the  Jews.  Those  who  attend 
to  the  evidence  will,  I  think,  reverse  such  a  judgment,  if  they 
should  happen  traditionally  to  have  held  it.  Afterwards,  but 
not  now,  were  the  Samaritans  hostile  to  the  Jews.  The  racial 
question  must,  however,  first  be  inquired  into  :  is  it  true  that 
the  Samaritans  were  not  of  Israelite  blood  ?  I  said,  early  in 
the  present  chapter,  that  the  Samaritans  were  of  mingled  blood 
(compare  2  Kings  xvii.  24  with  Jeremiah  xli.  4) ;  but  I  now  add 
that  the  predominant  strain  in  their  blood  was,  after  all,  IsraeUte. 
Whether  we  look  to  the  fact  that  the  Samaritans  in  the  after  history 
were  as  strictly  monotheistic  as  were  the  Jews,  and  practised 
circumcision  as  faithfully  as  the  Jews  did  ;  or  at  the  comparatively 
small  number  (some  27,000)  which  Sargon  in  his  inscriptions 
claims  to  have  transported  to  Assyria  ;  we  must  conclude  that 
it  was  the  nobles,  the  wealthy,  and  the  priestly  class  in  Samaria 
who  were  thus  transported,  but  not  the  commonalty.  Hence 
by  far  the  greater  number  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Samaritan 
country  were  true  Israelites ;  and  their  sentiments  towards 
the  Jews  would  be  of  a  mingled  nature,  capable  of  being  turned 
to  friendship  or  to  hostihty  according  to  the  trend  of  events.  . 

23—2 


366  THE    RESTORATION   OF   JERUSALEM:  [ch. 

That  the  Samaritan  leaders,  being  of  foreign  blood,  should  have 
joined  with  other  races  in  trying  to  hinder  the  Jews  from  re- 
building their  walls  and  temple  in  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes  I, 
as  narrated  in  Ezra  iv.  7-24,  cannot  surprise  us.  But  I  inchne 
to  think  that  the  help  which  in  Ezra  iv.  1,  2,  they  are  said  to 
have  offered  to  Zerubbabel  is  a  true  fact  (though  misplaced 
where  it  stands  in  the  narrative)  and  was  meant  in  a  genuinely 
friendly  sense  ;  and  though  Zerubbabel  mistrusted  it  (and  thereby 
probably  missed  a  great  opportunity),  we  have  reason  to  say 
that  the  disposition  of  the  Samaritans  towards  the  Jews  was 
not  at  once  turned  to  positive  enmity. 

What  reason  is  there  for  saying  this  ?  It  lies  in  a  certain 
incident  which  took  place  in  the  year  407  B.C.  We  know  from 
the  Aramaic  papyri  recently  discovered  near  Assuan  (to  which 
I  referred  just  now)  that  in  that  year  the  Jews  in  the  island 
of  Elephantine  near  Syene  (now  called  Assuan)  desired  to  obtain 
leave  to  rebuild  their  own  temple  in  Elephantine  (which  had 
been  violently  destroyed  by  their  enemies)  ;  and  in  order  to 
obtain  leave,  they  wrote  petitions  both  to  Bagohi,  the  governor 
of  Judaea  at  that  time,  and  to  Delaja  and  Schelemja,  sons  of 
Sinuballit,  the  governor  of  Samaria.  Moreover  the  answer  to 
these  Jews  of  Elephantine  came  in  a  letter  jointly  written  by 
Bagohi  and  Delaja.  The  governor  of  Judaea,  and  a  son  of  the 
governor  of  Samaria  (acting,  it  must  be  supposed,  on  behalf 
of  his  father)  make  answer  conjointly  to  a  request  made  by 
these  Egyptian  Jews  ;  and,  in  the  main,  give  permission  for 
what  is  asked.  Could  these  two  important  officials  have  acted 
together  if  the  states  which  they  represented  had  been  at  bitter 
enmity  with  each  other  ?  It  is  impossible.  Therefore,  in  the 
year  407  B.C.  the  enmity  between  Jews  and  Samaritans  as  such, 
which  raged  so  bitterly  afterwards,  had  not  yet  begun.  Aloreover, 
it  has  been  remarked  by  Lidzbarski  and  by  Meyer  {Der  Papyrus- 
fund  von  Elephantine,  pp.  86  sqq.)  that  while  the  petition  of  the 
Jews  of  Elephantine  is  in  the  main  granted,  they  are  not  permitted 
to  offer  whole  burnt  ofTcrings  in  their  temple  when  rebuilt  ; 
which  they  had  done  previously.  The  most  reasonable  account 
to  be  given  of  the  refusal  of  this  part  of  their  request  (for  they 
had  explicitly  asked  to  be  allowed  to  sacrifice  these  whole  burnt 
ofleriiigs)  is  that  the  Jews  of  Jerusalem  wished  to  mark  the 
inferiority  of  the  temple  at  Elephantine  to  their  own  temple 
at  Jerusalem.  It  confirms  this  view  of  the  matter,  that  the  Jews 
of  P]lephantine  had,  we  find,   written  previous  letters,  both  to 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  357 

Bagohi,  and  also  to  Jehohanan,  the  high  priest  at  Jerusalem, 
and  to  other  important  Jews  there,  with  the  same  request  as 
that  in  the  letter  which  has  been  discovered ;  but  had  received 
no  answer.  Clearly  the  Jews  at  Jerusalem  found  the  request 
rather  a  difficult  one  to  deal  with  ;  and  this  makes  it  the  more 
striking  that  they  should  have  taken  coimsel  with  the  Samaritans 
as  to  the  answer  to  give  to  it. 

Up  to  the  year  407  B.C.  then,  there  had  been  no  fatal  breach 
between  Jews  and  Samaritans.  I  have  said  nothing  about  the 
death  of  Zerubbabel ;  no  inference  can  be  drawn  from  the  Bible 
as  to  the  year  in  which  it  took  place  ;  it  is  likely  that  Bagohi 
succeeded  him  (and  at  any  rate  Bagohi  held  the  same  office). 
So  also  it  is  hkely  that  Jehohanan  succeeded  Jeshua  as  high 
priest ;  which  it  is  true  is  not  what  we  should  gather  from 
Nehemiah  xii,  10  or  from  Josephus,  Antiquities,  book  xi.  c.  5  ;  but 
we  must  be  prepared  for  omissions  in  these  ancient  records^. 

Though,  as  I  have  said,  the  feud  between  Jews  and  Samaritans 
had  not  begun  in  407  B.C.,  it  cannot  have  been  long  after  this 
that  it  began.  I  have  spoken  of  the  ardour  with  which  Zechariah, 
in  his  ninth  chapter,  looked  forward  to  the  union  of  Judah  and 
Ephraim,  and  their  united  victorious  career.  The  same  tone 
is  continued  in  his  tenth  chapter  : 

"I  will  strengthen  the  house  of  Judah"  cries  the  prophet,  speaking  in 
God's  name,  "  and  I  will  save  the  house  of  Joseph,  and  I  will  bring  them 
again,  for  I  have  mercy  upon  them  ;  and  they  shall  be  as  though  I  had 
not  cast  them  off  ;  for  I  am  Jehovah  their  God,  and  I  will  hear  them. 
And  they  of  Ephraim  shall  be  like  a  mighty  man,  and  their  heart  shall 
rejoice  as  through  wine  ;  yea,  their  children  shall  see  it,  and  rejoice  ; 
their  heart  shall  be  glad  in  Jehovah." 

Judah  and  Ephraim  are  to  be  united,  and  in  their  union  are 
to  be  all-powerful ;  that  is  Zechariah's  message  in  his  ninth 
and  tenth  chapters.  Alas  !  in  his  eleventh  chapter  all  is  changed. 
It  is  not  easy  to  interpret  everything  which  the  prophet  says 
in  this  chapter ;  but  his  main  theme  is  plain  ;  there  has  been 
misgovernment,  and  the  result  of  it  is  disruption  and  disaster. 
I  will  quote  his  main  metaphor ;  it  occurs  in  three  verses  which 
are  not  continuous,  but  the  meaning  is  obviously  continuous  : 

And  I  took  unto  me  two  staves  ;  the  one  I  called  Grace^,  and  the 
other  I  called  Union^  ;  and  I  fed  the  flock. .  .  .  And  I  took  my  staff  Grace, 
and  cut  it  asvmder,  that  I  might  break  my  covenant  which  I  had  made 

^  See  further  remarks  on  this  point  in  the  first  Appendix  to  this  chapter. 

^  In  our  versions,   "  Beauty "   and   "  Bands."     In  the  margin   of  our  Revised 
Version,  "  Graciousness  "  and  "  Binders,"  or  "  Union."     On  the  whole,   "  Grace  "  ■ 
and  "  Union  "  seem  to  me  to  express  best  the  intention  of  the  original. 


358  THE    RESTORATION    OF   JERUSALEM:  [CH. 

with  all  the  peoples.. .  .Then  I  cut  asunder  mine  other  staff,  even  Union, 
that  I  might  break  the  brotherhood  between  Judah  and  Israel.  Zechariah 
xi.  7,  10,  14. 

From  these  words  we  perceive  that  a  tragedy  has  taken  place. 
When  did  it  happen  ?     How  did  it  happen  ? 

It  was  indeed  a  tragedy  ;  not  indeed  known  for  such  by  the 
Jews  themselves,  either  in  that  age  or  at  any  time  afterwards, 
up  to  the  present  day  ;  for  a  conflict  was  taking  place  in  which 
the  narrower  party  were  victorious,  and  the  whole  character 
of  the  Jews  was  narrowed  thereby.  That  was  the  result  which 
evoked  the  poignant  reproaches  of  Zechariah.  He  would  have 
had  Judah  and  Ephraim — Jews  and  Samaritans — take  each 
other  to  their  hearts  as  friends  and  allies  ;  but  there  were  others 
who  did  not  desire  this  consummation,  and  these  others  were 
victorious. 

The  direct  Biblical  history  says  nothing  about  the  conflict 
to  which  I  have  referred  until  the  arrival  of  Ezra  at  Jerusalem 
in  the  year  398  B.C.,  and  even  then  glosses  it  over  as  far  as  possible  ; 
we  see  from  the  book  of  Ezra  that  it  must  have  taken  place 
(for  human  nature  does  not  suffer  the  tearing  asunder  of  the 
most  sacred  ties  without  some  resistance)  ;  and  the  book  of 
Nehemiah  has  a  few  sentences  which  show  that  it  did  take  place. 
But  the  book  of  Nehemiah  would  not,  if  taken  alone,  give  any 
idea  of  the  vehemence  and  duration  of  the  quarrel  which,  in 
the  fourth  century  before  Christ,  tore  asunder  the  Jews  of  Jeru- 
salem. It  is  Josephus  alone  ^  from  whom  we  learn  this  ;  and 
it  is  plain  that  Josephus  had  sources  of  information  which  are 
at  present  wanting  to  us.  Moreover,  though  Josephus  is  capable 
of  dealing  with  evidence  in  a  very  arbitrary  way,  his  narrative 
in  that  part  of  his  history  to  which  I  now  refer  does  so  distinctly 
supply  a  gap,  and  has  so  large  an  intrinsic  probability,  that  we 
cannot  but  accept  it  as  truth,  at  least  in  its  main  purport  and 
effect. 

I  return  now  to  the  situation  in  Judaea  and  Jerusalem  as 
it  existed  about  the  end  of  the  reign  and  the  life  of  Darius  Nothus. 
That  is,  I  think,  about  the  time  when  the  eleventh  chapter  of 
Zechariah  must  have  been  written.  For  it  was  a  time  of  trouble 
in  Persia  :  Egypt  had  revolted  and  had  been  lost  ;  there  was 
a  struggle  impending  as  to  who  should  be  king  of  Persia  after 
Darius  ;  and  it  was  a  time  when  trouble  might  naturally  arise 
in  Judaea  also.     The  two  contending  parties  within  the  Jewish 

*  Anti()Hilieti,  book  xi.  cc.  7  and  8. 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  359 

nation,  those  who  wished  the  nation  to  follow  with  rigid  obedience 
the  letter  of  the  divine  law,  and  those  who  felt  within  themselves 
the  motions  of  a  wider  and  more  generous  spirit,  were  face  to  face ; 
but  we  must  infer  from  the  words  of  Zechariah  that  the  narrower 
party  were  even  then  winning  the  day.  This,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  a  grief  to  Zechariah  ;  but  his  prophecy,  clear  and  intelligible 
up  to  the  point  which  I  have  reached,  becomes  difficult  after- 
wards ;  the  thoughts  are  full  of  a  kind  of  perplexed  patriotism, 
and  are  tender  too,  but  what  their  precise  mark  is  one  can  hardly 
say. 

The  victory  of  the  narrower  party  was  at  last  secured  by  the 
mission  of  Ezra.  He  came,  sent  by  Artaxerxes  Mnemon,  who 
was  then  in  the  seventh  year  of  his  reign  ;  about  398  B.C.  was 
the  date  of  Ezra's  coming  to  Jerusalem.  He  came  to  draw 
a  fence  round  the  Jewish  nation  ;  a  fence  prohibitive  of  friendly 
intercourse  with  the  nations  round  them  ;  a  fence  which  barred 
the  way  to  that  ideal  toward  which  every  noble  impulse  of  the 
Jewish  nation  tended,  the  ideal  of  a  world  friendly  to  Israel, 
obedient  to  God.  Though  the  Samaritans  are  not  named  in 
the  four  chapters  of  the  book  of  Ezra  which  contain  Ezra's 
personal  narrative,  we  cannot  doubt  that  he  reckoned  them  with 
Moabites,  Edomites,  and  Ammonites,  as  a  nation  with  whom 
the  Jews  were  not  on  any  account  to  hold  intimate  intercourse. 

He  came  to  Jerusalem  with  a  large  troop  of  followers  ;  and 
at  once  held  a  conference  v,ith  the  chief  men,  doubtless  those 
of  the  severer  party.  Thej^  told  him  (what  can  hardly  have 
been  news  to  him),  that  many  marriages  had  taken  place  between 
the  Jews  and  the  neighbouring  nations  ;  on  hearing  which  he 
says  :  "I  plucked  off  the  hair  of  my  head  and  of  my  beard, 
and  sat  down  astonied."  So  he  sat  all  day  till  the  time  of  the 
evening  oblation  (he  was  in  the  temple)  ;  and  a  great  congregation 
of  men  and  women  and  children  gathered  about  him,  as  was 
natural ;  for  he  was  a  great  man,  and  the  people  of  Jerusalem 
knew  that  something  important  was  going  to  take  place.  Then 
at  last  he  fell  on  his  ]<:nees,  and  with  tears  and  blushes  (as  he  tells 
us)  he  confessed  to  God  this  most  grievous  sin  of  the  people 
of  Judah,  that  many  of  them  had  married  women  from  the 
abominable  races  who  lived  round  them. 

Far  must  we  be  from  sympathising  with  his  tears,  his  blushes, 
and  his  confession.  It  is  curious  to  think  that  he  would  have 
absolutely  prohibited  the  marriage  of  Boaz  with  Ruth.  Possibly 
the  writer  of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  would  also  have  prohibited 


360  THE    RESTORATION    OF    JERUSALEM:  [ch. 

thdt  marriage  (xxiii.  3) ;  but  we  cannot  be  certain  of  his  meaning  ; 
and  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  is  mild  compared  with  Ezra.  By 
Ezra,  not  only  were  such  marriages  prohibited  in  the  future, 
but  those  then  existing  were  annulled.  The  last  chapter  of 
Ezra  relates  how  this  lawgiver  of  Judah  compelled  every  Jew 
who  had  married  a  non-Jewish  wife  to  send  that  wife  away, 
and  not  only  that  wife  but  the  children  he  had  had  by  her.  This 
stringent  measure  was  not  of  course  carried  out  in  its  full  scope 
immediately,  and  it  is  clear  that  those  who  were  not  in  the  highest 
station  were  often,  perhaps  generally,  able  to  conceal  the  fact 
that  their  wives  were  foreigners  ;  but  there  was  no  open  resistance 
to  the  decree. 

Let  us  say  what  can  be  said  for  Ezra.  He  was  a  strong 
man  ;  his  narrowness  gave  him  strength.  It  is  probable  that 
(in  spite  of  the  noble  prophet  Zechariah)  the  greater  number 
of  those  in  Judah  who  desired  the  broadening  of  the  rehgious 
rule  under  which  they  lived,  desired  it  for  selfish  reasons,  without 
any  proper  care  for  the  preservation  of  the  religious  faith  which 
they  had  received,  or  for  the  welfare  of  the  entire  community. 
Ezra  was  at  any  rate  not  selfish  ;  and  he  introduced  order  and 
rule  into  the  Jewish  nation,  though  not  an  order  and  a  rule 
by  any  means  wholly  to  be  approved  of.  The  absolute  severance 
between  Jew  and  Gentile  which  he  enforced  was  a  real  calamity 
to  the  Jewish  people  in  the  after  ages.  Still,  some  caution 
on  the  part  of  the  Jews,  in  their  intermarriage  with  foreigners, 
was  at  that  time  desirable.  The  Jews  were  carrying  down  to 
their  posterity  and  to  all  mankind  a  treasure  of  great  value, 
the  knowledge  of  God  through  personal  experience,  and  especially 
the  perception  that  the  highest  morality  of  man  is  sustained 
and  strengthened  by  God.  It  was  quite  possible  that  this  treasure 
might  be  made  more  fruitful,  and  might  gather  for  itself  a  larger 
area  on  which  to  expand,  by  the  nation  intermarrying  with 
foreigners.  On  the  other  hand,  such  intermarriage,  if  carried 
on  without  forethought  and  religious  feeling,  miglit  result  in 
corruption  of  the  religious  ideal,  and  disregard  of  the  religious 
spirit.  Against  this  latter  danger  Ezra  was  guarding,  but  in 
a  temper  that  might  almost  be  called  one  of  panic  ;  and  at 
any  rate  the  annulling  of  existent  marriages  was  a  step  wholly 
indefensible. 

The  immediate  .sequel  might  almo.st  lead  one  to  think,  though 
I  do  not  believe  it  would  be  a  true  inference,  that  the  measures 
of    Ezra    led    to    actual    fighting    between    the    Jews   and    their 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  361 

neighbours.  Thirteen  years  after  Ezra'^  arrival  at  Jerusalem, 
another  person,  enjoying  quite  equal  consideration  with  Ezra, 
and  sent  by  the  same  Persian  king  Artaxerxes,  arrived  on  an 
important  errand ;  namely,  to  rebuild  the  walls  of  Jerusalem. 
This  was  Nehemiah,  who  had  been  cupbearer  to  king  Artaxerxes, 
and  whose  zeal  for  the  rebuilding  of  the  walls  had  been  kindled 
by  a  message  from  Jerusalem  which  he  had  received  while  actually 
serving  the  king.     The  message  ran  thus  : 

The  remnant  that  are  left  of  the  captivity  there  in  the  province  are 
in  great  affliction  and  reproach:  the  wall  also  of  Jerusalem  is  broken  down, 
and  the  gates  thereof  are  burned  with  fire.     Nehemiah  i.  3. 

This  sounds  like  the  narration  of  a  recent  calamity ;  but  if 
anything  so  serious  as  the  entire  destruction  of  the  walls  of 
Jerusalem  had  happened  during  the  thirteen  years  between  the 
arrival  of  Ezra  and  the  arrival  of  Nehemiah,  it  is  very  strange 
that  no  hint  of  it  should  have  survived  in  the  writings  which 
we  possess.  There  is,  however,  an  inference  that  may  be  fairly 
drawn  from  the  passage  just  quoted,  and  that  is  that  the  Jews 
of  Jerusalem  had  suddenly  become  sensible  that  they  were 
in  danger  from  their  neighbours.  Intermarriage  with  those 
neighbours,  which  had  become  a  common  practice,  had  had 
a  peaceful  tendency  ;  Ammonites  and  Moabites  were  beginning 
to  look  upon  the  Jews  with  less  dislike  than  formerly.  But 
when  these  marriages  were  rescinded,  and  when  the  discarded 
wives  were  sent  back  (as  it  must  be  supposed  they  were)  to  their 
places  of  birth,  with  their  children  accompanying  them,  it  may 
be  conceived  with  what  intensity  the  old  unpopularity  of  the 
Jews  would  spring  up  again  ;  and  it  is  very  likely  that  the  neigh- 
bouring nations  would  threaten  the  Jews  with  a  warlike  attack  ; 
and  the  Jews  would  become  suddenly  sensible  that  their  city 
was  undefended,  in  a  way  in  which  they  had  not  felt  it  before. 
They  would  send  to  Nehemiah,  who  was  in  great  favour  with 
the  king  ;  and  the  result  would  be  what  we  have  seen.  It  is 
probable  also  that  they  would  have  another  reason  for  sending 
to  the  king's  court,  namely,  to  ask  for  the  appointment  of  a 
governor ;  for  we  see  that  Nehemiah,  when  he  arrived  at  Jerusalem, 
immediately  became  governor.  It  is  quite  possible  that  he  was 
successor  to  that  Bagohi,  who  is  mentioned  in  the  Assuan  papyri 
as  governor  of  Judaea  in  the  year  407  B.C.  (the  date  of  Nehemiah's 
arrival  at  Jerusalem  being  385  B.C.) ;  but  we  do  not  know  whether 
this  was  the  case. 

Nehemiah  was  an  energetic  man,  and  the  walls  of  Jerusalem' 


362  THE    RESTORATION    OF   JERUSALEM:  [ch. 

were  actually  rebuilt  in  52  days.  We  might  possibly  doubt 
this  statement,  and  prefer  that  of  Josephus,  who  tells  us  that 
the  walls  took  two  years  and  four  months  to  rebuild.  But 
Nehemiah  must  have  known  the  fact  (if  the  narrative  ascribed 
to  him  be  genuine,  as  I  believe  it  to  be) ;  and  his  statement 
is  the  more  probable  of  the  two.  For  the  Jews  were  in  urgent 
need  of  speed  ;  and  we  have  a  parallel  instance  in  the  building 
of  the  walls  of  Athens  in  477  B.C.,  when  the  Athenians  were 
on  the  alert  to  forestall  opposition  on  the  part  of  Sparta.  We 
must  accept  the  Bibhcal  statement ;  and  the  description  (in 
Nehemiah's  personal  narrative)  of  the  demeanour  of  the  leading 
adversaries  of  the  Jews  on  this  occasion  is  vivid  and  interesting. 
Nor  was  Nehemiah  less  concerned,  and  laudably  concerned, 
in  saving  the  poorer  Jews  from  usurious  exactions. 

But  as  regards  the  keeping  of  the  law  of  the  Pentateuch  with 
literal  exactness,  and  as  regards  the  prohibition  of  marriage 
with  foreigners,  Nehemiah  was  quite  at  one  with  Ezra ;  and 
his  action,  perhaps  about  360  B.C.,  produced  results  even  more 
notable  than  the  action  of  Ezra  in  the  marriage  question.  And 
now  I  come  to  the  point  where  we  have  to  rely  in  great  measure 
on  the  narrative  of  Josephus,  and  some  preliminary  remarks  on 
this  part  of  his  history  are  necessary. 

It  is  perfectly  evident  that  Josephus  made  no  use  at  all 
of  our  books  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  ;  the  first  book  of  Esdras 
was,  however,  a  great  authority  with  him  ;  and  he  had  access 
to  some  history  of  Nehemiah,  in  which  Nehemiah's  personal 
narrative  was  much  less  pronounced  than  in  our  canonical  book 
of  Nehemiah.  Also  Josephus  possessed  the  book  of  Esther, 
in  a  form  not  very  different  from  that  which  we  find  in  our  Bibles  ; 
and  he  possessed  something  like  our  apocryphal  book  of  Esther 
as  well.  In  fact,  in  the  Bible  as  Josephus  possessed  it,  Chronicles 
passed  by  a  direct  connexion  into  the  first  book  of  Esdras,  which 
in  its  turn  pas.sed  into  a  brief  narrative  concerning  Nehemiah, 
and  this  again  passed  into  the  story  of  Esther,  as  told  both  in 
our  Bible  and  in  our  Apocrypha.  From  the  Bible  which  lay 
before  him  in  this  way,  Josephus  proceeded  to  draw  his  own 
history  in  1  he  first  six  chapters  of  the  eleventh  book  of  his  Antiqui- 
ties. Now  the  probability  is  that  all  the  Biblical  books  thus 
named,  possessed  by  Josephus,  once  existed  in  Hebrew,  and 
that  Josephus  possessed  them  in  Hebrew.  If  so,  he  found  the 
following  Persian  kings  named  in  order  :  Cyrus,  Artaxerxes, 
Darius,  Artaxerxes,  Ahasuerus.     If  Josephus  only  possessed  these 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  363 

books  in  Greek,  Ahasuerus  would  disappear,  and  a  third  Artaxerxes 
take  his  place.  Whether  Josephus  possessed  them  in  Hebrew 
or  in  Greek,  he  in  either  case  recognised  five  Persian  kings  as 
being  named  in  them  ;  and  he  knew  enough  of  secular  history 
to  be  aware  that  the  first  five  Persian  kings,  beginning  with 
CjTus,  were  not  named  as  his  Bibhcal  authorities  named  them. 
Consequently,  by  a  most  uncritical  procedure,  and  without 
giving  any  warning  to  his  reader  of  what  he  was  doing,  he  changed 
the  names  of  these  kings  into  what  he  assumed  the  Biblical 
writer  must  have  meant ;  and  instead  of  their  names  appearing 
as  Cyrus,  Artaxerxes,  Darius,  Artaxerxes,  Ahasuerus,  they  appear 
in  his  Antiquities  as  Cyrus,  Cambyses,  Darius,  Xerxes,  Artaxerxes. 
The  result  is  that  he  represents  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  as  Uving 
in  the  reign  of  Xerxes,  or  between  485  B.C.  and  465  B.C.  This 
is  a  most  extraordinary  transformation  of  history,  but  Josephus 
was  not  at  all  aware  of  the  pitfalls  that  lay  in  his  way,  and  we 
must  not  think  too  badly  of  him  as  a  historian  because,  meeting 
with  a  historical  difficulty,  he  cut  the  Gordian  knot  in  a  way 
at  which  a  modern  critic  must  smile.  He  really  had  some 
knowledge,  though  an  inaccurate  knowledge,  of  the  reigns  of 
Cyrus,  Cambyses,  Darius  son  of  Hystaspes,  Xerxes,  and  Artaxerxes 
the  first,  called  Longimanus  (under  whom  he  places  Esther). 
But  of  Persian  history  after  Artaxerxes  Longimanus,  Josephus 
had  very  httle  knowledge  indeed. 

Yet  Josephus  was  in  possession  of  a  document,  derived  from 
some  quarter  unknown  to  us,  which  gives  us  important  and  even 
startling  information  respecting  the  years  between  360  B.C.  and 
320  B.C.  This  information  is  found  in  the  seventh  and  eighth 
chapters  of  the  eleventh  book  of  his  Antiquities.  An  Artaxerxes, 
manifestly  Artaxerxes  Ochus,  is  mentioned ;  also  a  Darius,  who 
is  none  other  than  Darius  Codomannus,  the  last  of  the  Persian 
kings,  dethroned  by  Alexander  of  Macedon.  Part  of  the  narra- 
tive contained  in  these  chapters,  the  reverence  paid  by  Alexander 
to  the  Jewish  high  priest,  may  fairly  be  disbelieved ;  and  there 
seem  to  be  some  minor  errors.  But  the  first  story  contained 
in  these  chapters  is  entirely  probable ;  and  the  second  story  is 
supported  in  its  main  point  by  the  book  of  Nehemiah. 

The  first  story  runs  thus.  King  Artaxerxes  had  a  minister 
called  Bagoses ;  who,  from  the  date  implied,  and  from  his 
tyrannical  character,  is  evidently  the  same  as  the  Bagoas  of 
whom  Diodorus  tells  us — the  unscrupulous  minister  of  Artaxerxes 
Ochus.     Now  Joiada,  the  high  priest  at  Jerusalem,  had  died ;   hi& 


364  THE    RESTORATION    OF    JERUSALEM:  [oh. 

two  sons,  Jesus  and  John,  quarrelled  for  the  succession.  Bagoses 
favoured  Jesus ;  but  the  brothers  came  to  blows  in  the  temple, 
and  John  slew  Jesus,  thus  becoming  high  priest.  Bagoses,  in 
great  anger,  and  in  spite  of  the  remonstrances  of  the  Jews, 
entered  the  most  sacred  parts  of  the  temple,  and  for  seven  years 
afterwards  continued  to  fine  the  Jews  heavily.  No  Jew  would 
have  invented  such  a  story  as  this,  and  we  must  account  it  true. 
For  the  second  story,  let  me  begin  with  the  book  of  Nehemiah. 
In  that  book  the  most  prominent  adversary  of  Nehemiah  is 
Sanballat,  who  is  called  the  Horonite,  but  who  is  plainly  an 
inhabitant  of  Samaria,  and  a  very  influential  inhabitant — though 
not,  as  far  as  the  book  of  Nehemiah  tells  us,  the  governor 
of  that  province^.  Josephus  does  not  tell  us  anything  about 
the  early  history  of  Sanballat,  but  he  tells  us  that  he  was  made 
governor  of  Samaria  by  the  last  king  of  Persia,  i.e.  by  Darius 
Codomannus  ;  and  he  adds  that  Sanballat  died  at  an  advanced 
age  in  the  year  in  which  Alexander  took  Gaza,  i.e.  332  B.C.  If 
Sanballat  was  eighty  years  old  then,  he  would  be  about  twenty- 
seven  in  the  year  385  B.C.,  when  Nehemiah  came  to  Jerusalem 
and  rebuilt  the  walls  ;  after  which  time  unfriendly  relations 
between  the  two  existed  continuously.  But  Nehemiah  left 
Jerusalem  in  the  year  373  B.C.  to  resume  some  post  at  the  coiurt 
of  king  Artaxerxes  Mnemon  ;  and  during  his  absence  the  Jews 
reverted  to  laxer  habits ;  among  which  sabbath-breaking  is 
mentioned,  and  also  the  foreign  marriages,  which  continued 
in  spite  of  Ezra's  stern  prohibition  of  them.  Nehemiah,  on 
his  return,  acted  stringently  against  both  these  irregularities  ; 
and  when  a  son  of  Joiada,  the  prospective  high  priest,  actually 
married  a  daughter  of  Sanballat,  Nehemiah,  in  great  indignation, 
banished  the  offender  and  his  wife^.  Now  this  marriage, 
and  the  departure  of  the  offender  from  Jerusalem,  is  mentioned 
by  Josephus  also  ;  though  Josephus  says  it  was  a  grandson 
of  Joiada  who  married  the  daughter  of  Sanballat.  We  must 
prefer  the  authority  of  the  book  of  Nehemiah  in  this,  and  also 
in  the  date  suggested  for  the  event  ;  for  it  could  hardly  have 
happened  later  than  360  B.C.,  whereas  from  Josephus  it  would 
appear  to  have  happened  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  that. 
It  is  impossible,  however,  to  doubt  that  the  book  of  Nehemiah 


*  He  ia  no  doubt  a  nanicsako  of  that  Similmllit.  wlio  was  mentioned  a  few  pages 
back  as  friendly  to  the  Jews,  on  tlic  authority  of  the  Aramaic  papyri  ;  but  the  Sanballat 
of  the  book  of  Nehemiah  was  very  unfriendly  to  them. 

*  Nehemiah  xiii.  28. 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  365 

and  Josephiis  refer  to  the  same  event ;  and  the  value  of  Josephus 
here  is  that  he  indicates  the  great  importance  of  the  event. 
It  led  to  the  building  of  the  Samaritan  temple  on  Mount  Gerizim  ; 
and  also,  when  once  Manasseh  (for  that  was  the  name  of  San- 
ballat's  son-in-law)  had  settled  in  Samaria,  other  Jews  also  who 
had  married  foreign  wives  joined  him  there.  There  was  from 
this  time  forward,  for  many  years,  a  great  drain  of  valuable 
citizens  from  Judaea  to  Samaria,  in  consequence  of  the  stringent 
marriage  prohibitions  enforced  in  Judaea,  and  this  was  not  only 
in  itself  a  loss  to  the  Jews,  but  it  was  what  made  the  bitter  quarrel 
between  Jew  and  Samaritan  irremediable.  So  memorable  a 
fact  gives  us  a  true  key  to  the  later  Jewish  history,  and  a  key 
not  found  in  any  other  quarter.  It  is,  as  far  as  the  Jews  are 
concerned,  the  great  fact  of  the  fourth  century  before  Christ. 
It  put  the  seal  on  the  narrow  legislation  of  Ezra;  it  separated 
the  Jews,  finally,  from  any  intimate  intercourse  with  the  nations 
of  the  world  around  them.  That  is  a  result  which  we  may 
ponder  over ;  we  may  draw  lessons  for  ourselves  from  it ;  but  a 
satisfactory  result  it  was  not. 

Neither  the  fault  of  Ezra,  nor  that  persistent  Jewish  narrowness 
which  resulted  from  it,  ought  to  be  disguised.  But  yet,  let 
the  reader  reflect  on  the  whole  story  which  I  have  told  in  the 
present  chapter ;  on  the  long  struggle,  never  yet  adequately 
recognised  by  historians,  which  the  Jews  underwent  after  they 
began  to  return  from  the  Babylonian  captivity;  on  their  suc- 
cessful emergence  from  that  struggle  ;  and  let  him  say  whether 
the  Jews  do  not  appear  in  it  a  most  noble,  most  worthy 
people  ?  It  is  true  that  in  the  end,  when  they  consolidated 
their  government  under  Ezra,  they  fell  short  of  the  great  ideal 
which  their  prophets  had  foretold  as  their  future  heritage.  They 
could  not  become,  as  a  nation,  the  evangelists  of  the  world. 
But  they  had  made  great  steps  in  that  direction.  We  may 
think,  perhaps,  that  it  was  a  needless  effort  which  they  made, 
to  get  back  to  Jerusalem  from  Babylon.  On  the  highest  plane 
of  thought,  no  doubt,  it  was  needless.  But  we  must  not  demand 
that  every  one  shall  be  on  the  highest  plane  of  thought.  The 
desire  to  return  to  Jerusalem  was  in  their  Ufeblood  ;  they  could 
not  get  rid  of  it ;  it  was  deeply  commingled  with  their  trust 
in  God.  And  how  valiantly  did  they  contend  for  it  !  Not, 
as  in  the  ordinary  histories  is  told,  by  the  help  of  princes  ;  Cyrus 
did  not  help  them  at  all  with  money  or  arms  ;  even  Darius  Nothus 
helped   them   more   by   his   friendship   than   by   material   help ;_ 


366  THE    RESTORATION    OF   JERUSALEM:  [ch. 

and  when  Darius  Nothus  came  to  the  throne  of  Persia,  the  Jews 
had  gone  through  the  brunt  of  the  battle. 

Finally,  if  it  be  asked  with  what  degree  of  confidence  I  main- 
tain the  correctness  of  the  story  as  I  have  told  it,  I  answer 
that,  if  the  narratives  given  by  Josephus  in  the  eleventh  book 
of  his  Antiquities,  about  those  two  persons,  Bagoses  and  Manasseh, 
be  substantially  true,  nothing  will  prevent  the  whole  story  of 
the  Jews  after  the  Babylonian  captivity,  as  I  have  told  it,  being 
substantially  true ;  and  I  think  the  narratives  in  Josephus 
are  true,  with  some  qualifications  in  detail.  For  further  comments 
on  this  subject,  I  must  refer  to  the  first  Appendix  to  this  chapter. 

After  Alexander  of  Macedon  had  subdued  the  Persian  empire, 
the  Jews  fell  first  under  the  dominion  of  the  Ptolemies  of  Egypt ; 
and  the  Ptolemies,  though  not  always,  yet  generally,  treated 
them  mildly  and  equitably.  A  certain  sympathy,  amid  many 
difficulties,  began  to  be  established  between  Greeks  and  Jews. 
The  book  of  Wisdom,  with  its  Platonic  zeal  for  the  doctrine  of 
immortality,  has  the  spirit  of  this  time,  though  generally  held  to 
have  been  composed  in  a  later  century.  I  do  not  know  to  what 
period  we  can  better  refer  Ecclesiastes,  which  (Uke  Wisdom) 
is  nominally  the  work  of  king  Solomon.  I  have  been  convinced 
by  the  recent  arguments  of  Mr  J.  H.  Hart^  that  Ecclesiasticus 
also  belongs  to  the  third  century  ;  the  great  initial  difficulty 
of  thinking  so,  the  mention  in  the  prologue  of  the  "  thirty- 
eighth  year  of  Euergetes  the  king  "  has,  it  seems  to  me,  been 
overcome  by  him  successfully.  Ecclesiasticus  is  a  book  full  of 
dignified  thought,  and  though  severe,  yet  philanthropic.  The 
writer  hardly  believes  in  the  doctrine  of  immortality.  We  may 
regret  in  him  a  narrowness  towards  the  Samaritans;  and  there 
may  be  something  of  the  common-place  in  the  book.  Yet  the 
common-place  may  sometimes  fitly  be  spoken,  especially  when 
combined  with  sincere  and  lofty  feeling  ;  and  such  maxims  as 
the  following  are  not  quite  common-place  : 

When  a  man  hath  finished,  then  he  is  but  at  the  beginning.  Ecclesi- 
asticus xviii.  7. 

Reprove  thy  neighbour  ;  it  may  be  he  said  it  not ;  and  if  he  liath 
said  it,  that  he  may  not  say  it  again.     Ibid.  xix.  14. 

A  wise  man  will  be  silent  till  his  time  come.     Ibid.  xx.  7. 

Many  literary  works,  besides  those  above  mentioned,  were 
completed  by  the  Jews  in  the  third  century  before  Christ— 
probably  the  "  Song  of  Songs  "'  ;  certainly  the  books  of  Chronicles, 

'  In  his  work  on   Ecclesiastic uh. 


XIV]  THE    PSALMS:    ZECHARIAH  367 

Ezra,  Nehemiah,  Esther ;  and  probably  the  very  imaginative  books 
of  Tobit  and  Judith,  though  it  is  impossible  to  express  certainty 
on  such  a  point.  The  great  and  profound  book  of  Job  seems 
to  me  to  have  a  reference  all  through  to  the  affliction  of  Israel 
during  the  Babylonian  captivity,  and  the  restoration  of  Israel 
afterwards ;  hence  it  might  probably  have  been  composed  in  the  fifth 
century  before  Christ,  and  there  may  be  in  it  even  earlier  elements. 
It  was  in  the  third  century  that  translations  of  the  Old  Testament 
into  Greek  began  to  be  written,  and  Alexandria  was  the  place 
which  initiated  this  kind  of  work.  Altogether,  the  third  century 
was  on  the  whole  a  time  of  quiet  and  prosperous  labour  for  the 
Jews,  till  near  the  end  of  it. 

Then  the  powerful  and  ambitious  Greek  kings  of  Syria  half 
wrested,  half  filched,  the  land  of  Israel  from  the  Ptolemies, 
and  a  time  of  greater  trial  began  ;  of  which  my  next  chapter 
must  tell. 


APPENDIX   I   TO   CHAPTER   XIV 

THE  TRUE  CHARACTER  OF  THE  CHAPTERS  EZRA  U.  AND  III., 
TOGETHER  WITH  SOME  OTHER  REMARKS  BEARING  ON  THE 
DATE  OF  ZERUBBABEL 

I  AM  afraid  I  cannot  avoid  an  argument  of  some  complexity. 
I  have  excluded  it  from  my  direct  narrative  ;  no  reader  is  bound 
to  test  my  reasons  for  what  I  say  ;  but  I  am  bound  to  give  him 
the  means  of  testing  them,  if  he  wishes  to  do  so. 

I  begin  then  with  the  consideration  of  the  two  chapters, 
Ezra  ii.  and  iii. ;  and  my  thesis  has  been  that  they  have  no  business 
to  be  where  they  are.  The  same  is  I  think  true  of  the  first  five, 
or  at  any  rate  the  first  three,  verses  of  chapter  iv. 

Let  me  call  attention  to  the  passage,  Ezra  ii.  70-iii.  2,  as 
compared  with  Nehemiah  vii.  73-viii.  1.  I  will  quote  both 
passages  ;    first,  that  from  Ezra  : 

So  the  priests,  and  the  Levites,  and  some  of  the  people,  and  the 
singers,  and  the  porters,  and  the  Nethinim,  dwelt  in  their  cities,  and  all 
Israel  in  their  cities.  And  when  the  seventh  month  was  come,  and  the 
children  of  Israel  were  in  the  cities,  the  people  gathered  themselves  together 
as  one  man  to  Jerusalem.  Then  stood  up  Jeshua  the  son  of  Jozadak,  and 
his  bretliren  the  priests,  and  Zervibbabel  the  son  of  Shealtiel,  and  his 
brethren,  and  builded  the  altar  of  the  God  of  Israel,  to  offer  burnt  offerings 
thereon. 


368  APPENDIX   I    TO    CHAPTER   XIV 

Next,   that  from  Nehemiah  : 

So  the  priests,  and  the  Levites,  and  the  porters,  and  the  singers, 
and  some  of  the  people,  and  the  Nethinim,  and  all  Israel,  dwelt  in  their 
cities.  And  when  the  seventh  month  was  come,  the  children  of  Israel 
were  in  their  cities.  And  all  the  people  gathered  themselves  together 
as  one  man  into  the  broad  place  that  was  before  the  Watergate  ;  and 
they  spake  unto  Ezra  the  scribe  to  bring  the  book  of  the  law  of  Moses, 
which  Jehovah  had  commanded  to  Isreiel. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  first  part  of  each  of  these  passages, 
down  to  the  words  "  as  one  man,"  is  practically  the  same  ;  the 
latter  part  is  quite  different.  The  passage  in  the  book  of  Ezra 
professes  to  be  relating  what  happened  in  the  reign  of  Cjtus, 
about  538  B.C.  ;  the  passage  in  the  book  of  Nehemiah  professes 
to  be  relating  what  happened  in  the  reign  of  some  Artaxerxes, 
and  in  the  twentieth  year  of  that  reign  ;  and  as  the  earliest 
Artaxerxes  began  to  reign  about  464  B.C.,  the  passage  in  the 
book  of  Nehemiah  refers  to  events  which  took  place  not  earlier 
than  445  b.c.^  It  would  be  vain  to  deny  that  one  of  the  two 
passages  is  copied  from  the  other  passage  (down  to  the  words 
"  as  one  man  ")  ;  how  came  the  copyist  to  copy  what  he  certainly 
ought  not  to  have  copied,  since  the  events  of  538  b.c.  could  not 
possibly  give  him  direct  information  as  to  what  happened  a 
century  or  a  century  and  a  half  later  ?  Up  to  a  certain  point 
the  answer  is  easy  ;  the  writer  of  the  book  of  Nehemiah  has 
professed  to  be  copying  the  list  of  returning  exiles  which  he  found 
in  the  book  of  Ezra,  which  was  a  perfectly  legitimate  thing  to 
do  ;  what  was  not  legitimate  was  his  continuing,  after  he  had 
got  to  the  end  of  the  list,  to  quote  the  history  which  followed. 
It  seems,  on  the  face  of  it,  a  piece  of  inaccurate  bungling  ;  but 
we  cannot  help  asking  why  the  historian  should  bungle  in  this 
way.  Was  it  pure  accident  ?  We  are  certainly  justified  in 
asking  whether  there  may  not  have  been  a  motive  for  it. 

Having  this  question  before  us,  my  next  remark  is  that, 
whatever  we  may  think  of  the  chapters  of  Ezra  which  are  my 
present  theme  (chapters  ii.  and  iii.  and  the  first  five  verses  of 
chapter  iv.),  they  were  not  originally  in  the  position  in  which 
they  are  now.  They  originally  existed  as  an  independent  passage  ; 
the  compiler  of  the  book  of  Ezra  found  them  as  an  independent 
passage,  and  inserted  them  in  the  place  where  they  are  now, 
because  he  thought  that  context  suited  and  required  them.  We 
know  this,  because  haj)pily  we  possess  the  Greek  first  book  of 

'   In  my   account  of   the  }iiKtory,  I   put   tliesc  events  in   the   rcij^ji  of  the  second 
Artaxerxes,  and  tlicrefor(!  in  tlie  year  385  B.C. 


EZRA   II    AND    III  369 

Esdras,  which  m  many  respects  is  another  edition  of  the  Hebrew 
book  of  Ezra,  but  which  differs  from  the  book  of  Ezra  in  some 
important  particulars.  One  of  the  differences  between  the  two 
books  hes  in  the  place  which  they  assign  to  the  passage  of  which 
I  am  now  speaking.  Let  the  reader  compare  the  two  books, 
and  he  will  see  that,  while  the  first  book  of  Esdras  has  a  passage 
which  exactly  corresponds  to  the  passage  in  the  book  of  Ezra 
(1  Esdras  v.  7-73  =  Ezra  ii.  and  iii.  and  iv.  1-5),  it  is  placed 
in  a  different  context.  The  passage  in  the  first  book  of  Esdras 
has  a  position  which  corresponds  to  the  position  which  the 
passage  in  Ezra  would  have  had,  if  it  had  been  put  after  the 
end  of  the  fourth  chapter  of  Ezra  and  just  before  the  fifth 
chapter.  What  tends  to  disguise  this  difference  between  the 
two  books  from  an  ordinary  reader  is  the  fact  that  the  first 
book  of  Esdras  interposes,  immediately  before  the  list  of  the 
returning  exiles,  a  romantic  story  about  Zerubbabel,  and  especially 
about  Zerubbabel's  relations  to  king  Darius  ;  it  is  a  story  which 
does  not  appear  in  the  book  of  Ezra,  and  which  we  cannot  but 
regard  as  pure  fable  ;  but  it  diverts  attention  from  the  exact 
order  of  the  narrative  in  the  first  book  of  Esdras.  However, 
the  book  of  Ezra  and  the  first  book  of  Esdras  do  differ  in  arrange- 
ment here;  and  it  is  obvious  that  the  compiler  of  the  book  of 
Ezra,  and  the  compiler  of  the  first  book  of  Esdras,  had  each  of 
them  in  his  possession  the  list  of  the  returning  exiles  and  the 
narrative  which  immediately  follows  (i.e.  Ezra  ii.  iii.  iv.  1-5  in 
the  one  case,  1  Esdras  v.  7-73  in  the  other  case),  but  that  they 
differed  in  opinion  as  to  the  exact  place  where  the  list  and  its 
sequel  should  be  inserted.  The  history,  apart  from  this  difference 
(and  excluding  also  the  romantic  story  about  Zerubbabel's  relations 
to  king  Darius),  is  in  the  main  the  same  in  both  books. 

I  now  proceed  to  make  a  remark,  which  I  think  will  be  acknow- 
ledged to  be  important.  While,  if  we  exclude  the  passages  just 
mentioned,  alike  from  the  book  of  Ezra  and  from  the  first  book  of 
Esdras,  either  book  gives  a  narrative  which  is  perfectly  correct 
as  to  the  order  of  the  Persian  kings,  though  with  omission  of 
some  important  kings,  the  insertion  of  the  passages  disorders 
the  chronology  altogether.  In  the  first  book  of  Esdras  the 
disorder  consists  in  this,  that  a  narrative  which  obviously  assumes 
Cyrus  to  be  the  reigning  monarch  (1  Esdras  v.  55,  71,  73)  is 
placed  in  the  middle  of  the  reign  of  Darius.  In  the  book  of  Ezra 
the  disorder  consists  in  this,  that  Zerubbabel,  who  is  represented 
as  returning  to  Jerusalem  in  the  reign  of  Cyrus  (about  538  B.C. 

M.  D. A.  24 


370  APPENDIX   I    TO    CHAPTER   XIV 

in  our  mode  of  reckoning)  and  at  the  head  of  a  large  body  of 
followers,  is  altogether  unmentioned  through  the  succeeding  reigns, 
which  include  those  of  Ahasuerus  (or  Xerxes)  and  of  the  first 
Artaxerxes,  until  he  appears  again  in  the  reign  of  Darius  (who 
as  following  upon  Xerxes  and  the  first  Artaxerxes  roust  be 
Darius  Nothus)  about  422  B.C.  as  a  still  vigorous  man,  and  as 
rebuilding  and  dedicating  the  temple. 

It  will  be  conceded  that  neither  the  compiler  of  the  book 
of  Ezra,  nor  the  compiler  of  the  first  book  of  Esdras,  has  been 
happy  in  the  selection  of  a  place  in  which  to  insert  the  passage 
of  which  I  have  been  speaking.  If  any  further  argument  were 
needed  to  prove  that  the  passage  is  interpolated  in  the  first 
book  of  Ezra,  and  does  not  properly  belong  to  its  context,  it 
would  be  found  in  the  fact  that  Sheshbazzar,  who  in  the  first 
chapter  of  Ezra  is  named  as  '"  the  prince  of  Judah  "  and  the 
leader  of  the  returning  exiles,  is  in  the  second  chapter,  which 
professes  to  give  a  list  of  returning  exiles,  not  even  named  at 
all.  In  the  third  chapter  of  Ezra,  Zerubbabel  and  Jeshua  appear 
as  leaders  ;  and  hence  some  have  supposed  that  Sheshbazzar 
and  Zerubbabel  were  one  and  the  same  person.  This  supposition 
is,  however,  rendered  impossible  by  the  fact  that  in  the  fifth 
chapter  of  Ezra,  verses  11-16,  in  a  speech  or  letter  attributed 
to  persons  of  whom  Zerubbabel  was  one,  Sheshbazzar  is  referred 
to  as  an  antecedent  governor  of  Judah,  who  had  laid  the  founda- 
tions of  the  temple  in  the  time  of  Cyrus,  a  considerable  time 
previously. 

Thus  the  passage  of  which  I  have  been  speaking  (Ezra  ii.  iii. 
iv.  1-5  or  1  Esdras  v.  7-73)  is  not  at  all  recommended  to  us 
by  the  facts  which  we  have  just  discovered  about  it.  Having 
been  in  the  possession  both  of  the  compiler  of  the  book  of  Ezra, 
and  the  compiler  of  the  first  book  of  Esdras,  neither  of  these 
compilers  could  find  a  proper  use  for  it  ;  each  of  them  inserted 
it  in  his  history,  but  they  inserted  it  in  different  places  ;  and 
neither  place  suits  it  at  all. 

It  will  now  be  proper  to  recall  the  fact  that,  besides  the 
apparent  impossibility  of  inserting  the  passage  consistently  in 
the  history  as  we  know  it,  there  is  also  in  the  middle  of  it  a  very 
curious  conjunction  of  its  parts,  which  may  indicate  in  it  an 
internal  weakness  also.  The  second  and  third  chapters  of  Ezra, 
which  constitute  the  greater  part  of  the  passage  on  which  I  am 
commenting,  profess  to  tell,  in  the  first  place,  the  names  and 
numbers  of  the  Jews  who  returned  to  Jerusalem   in  the  reign 


EZRA  II  AND  III  371 

of  C3TUS  (this  is  in  the  second  chapter),  secondly,  how  these 
Jews  immediately  after  their  return  kept  the  feast  of  tabernacles, 
and  afterwards  began  to  rebuild  the  temple  (this  is  in  the  third 
chapter).  These  two  portions  of  the  narrative  are  connected 
by  a  few  verses,  which  I  have  quoted  already,  but  which  it  will 
be  well  for  me  to  quote  again  : 

So  the  priests,  and  the  Levites,  and  some  of  the  people,  and  the 
singers,  and  the  porters,  and  the  Nethinim,  dwelt  in  their  cities,  and 
all  Israel  in  their  cities.  And  when  the  seventh  month  was  come,  and 
the  children  of  Israel  were  in  the  cities,  the  people  gathered  themselves 
together  as  one  man  to  Jerusalem.  Then  stood  up  Jeshua  the  son  of 
Jozaxiak,  and  his  brethren  the  priests,  and  Zerubbabel  son  of  Shealtiel, 
and  his  brethren,  and  builded  the  altar  of  the  God  of  Israel,  to  offer  burnt 
offerings  thereon,  as  it  is  written  in  the  law  of  Moses  the  man  of  God. 
Ezra  ii.  70-iii.  2. 

The  peculiarity  of  these  verses  is  that  the  first  half  of  them, 
down  to  the  words  "  as  one  man,"  is  repeated  again  in  the  book 
of  Nehemiah  as  descriptive  of  quite  another  period  of  history ;  a 
period,  on  the  most  favourable  supposition,  ninety- three  years  later 
than  the  reign  of  Cyrus,  which  is  the  period  to  which  the  book  of 
Ezra  here  refers.     Here,  again,  is  the  passage  from  Nehemiah  : 

So  the  priests,  and  the  Levites,  and  the  porters,  and  the  singers, 
and  some  of  the  people,  and  the  Nethinim,  and  all  Israel,  dwelt  in  their 
cities.  And  when  the  seventh  month  was  come,  the  children  of  Israel 
were  in  their  cities.  And  all  the  people  gathered  themselves  together 
as  one  man  into  the  broad  place  that  was  before  the  water  gate  ;  and  they 
spake  unto  Ezra  the  scribe  to  bring  the  book  of  the  law  of  Moses,  which 
Jehovah  had  commanded  to  Israel.     Nehemiah  vii.  73-viii,  1. 

The  writer  of  the  book  of  Nehemiah ^  had  professed  to  be 
copying  a  catalogue,  which  catalogue  we  find  in  fact  just  before 
the  words  here  quoted ;  but  it  is  quite  evident  that  if  the  book 
of  Ezra  in  its  second  and  third  chapters  be  true  history  the 
writer  of  the  book  of  Nehemiah  has  copied  more  than  a  catalogue  ; 
he  has  copied  also  a  piece  of  history  appended  to  the  catalogue, 
and  he  has  made  that  piece  of  history,  which  originally  applied 
to  the  time  of  Cyrus,  do  duty  as  descriptive  of  the  time  of  Nehe- 
miah. This,  as  I  remarked  at  the  beginning  of  this  appendix, 
appears  to  be  a  piece  of  careless  bungling.  But  now  let  me  give 
the  reasons  which  appear  to  me  conclusive,  for  believing  that 
the  catalogue  to  which  the  above  verses  are  appended  was  not 
originally  intended  to  be  a  catalogue  of  the  time  of  Cyrus  at  all ; 
that  its  true  date  lies  far  nearer  to  the  time  of  Nehemiah;    and 

1  Who  is  not,  in  this  part,  Nehemiah  himself.  Yet  the  catalogue,  in  its  main 
substance,  may  really  have  been  the  one  that  Nehemiah  found. 

24—2 


372  APPENDIX   I    TO    CHAPTER   XIV 

that,  in  reality,  the  catalogue  which  we  find  in  the  second  chapter 
of  Ezra  was  copied  from  this  catalogue,  which  we  now  find  in 
the  seventh  chapter  of  Nehemiah  ;  that  the  copying  was  from 
the  book  of  Nehemiah  to  the  book  of  Ezra,  and  not  the  other 
way.  If  this  be  so,  the  bungle  lies,  not  in  the  book  of  Nehemiah, 
but  in  the  book  of  Ezra,  The  compiler  of  the  two  books  was 
indeed,  as  I  believe,  the  same  person  ;  but  the  error  existed 
in  his  materials  before  he  received  them — and  in  that  part  of 
his  materials  which  we  now  know  as  the  passage  Ezra  ii.  iii. 
iv.  1-5. 

In  considering  the  question  thus  suggested,  it  is  necessary 
to  take  the  first  book  of  Esdras  to  aid  us.  The  passages 
which  I  have  already  quoted  from  the  books  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah 
have  their  counterparts  in  the  first  book  of  Esdras.  The  counter- 
part of  Ezra  ii.  70-iii.  2  is  1  Esdras  v.  46-49  ;   it  runs  thus  : 

And  the  priests  and  the  Levites  and  they  that  were  of  the  people 
dwelt  in  Jerusalem  and  the  country  ;  the  holy  singers  also  and  the  porters 
and  all  Israel  in  their  villages.  But  when  the  seventh  month  was  at 
hand,  and  when  the  children  of  Israel  were  every  man  in  his  own  place, 
they  came  all  together  with  one  consent  into  the  broad  place  before  the 
first  porch  wliich  is  toward  the  east.  Then  stood  up  Jesus  the  son  of 
Josedek,  and  liis  brethren  the  priests,  and  Zorobabel  the  son  of  Salatliiel, 
and  his  brethren,  and  made  ready  the  altar  of  the  God  of  Israel,  to  offer 
burnt  sacrifices  upon  it,  according  as  it  is  expressly  commanded  in  the 
book  of  Moses  the  man  of  God. 

The  above  passage,  like  the  passages  in  Ezra  and  Nehemiah, 
occurs  at  the  end  of  the  catalogue  given  in  those  books  ;  but 
the  last  passage  that  I  will  quote  from  the  first  book  of  Esdras, 
the  passage  which  is  the  counterpart  of  Nehemiah  vii.  73-viii.  1, 
and  which  is  in  fact  1  Esdras  ix.  37-39,  has  no  catalogue  to  precede 
it,  nor  would  it  appear  that  the  compiler  of  the  first  book  of 
Esdras  found  any  catalogue  preceding  it,  though  we  cannot 
bo  quite  certain  on  this  point  ;  for  he  may  have  found  such  a 
catalogue,  and  excluded  it  as  not  pertinent  to  his  own  narrative. 
It  will  not  make  much  difi'erence  to  us  here  whether  the  compiler 
of  1  Esdras  possessed  but  ignored  Nehcmiah's  personal  narrative, 
with  the  catalogue  which  is  the  sequel  of  it,  or  whether  he  did 
not  possess  these  documents  at  all.  With  this  explanation 
I  now  proceed  to  (juote  1  Esdras  ix.  37-39  : 

And  the  priests  and  the  Levites,  and  they  that  were  of  Israel,  dwelt 
in  Jerusalem,  and  in  the  country,  on  the  new  moon  of  the  seventh  month, 
and  the  children  of  Israel  in  their  habitations.  And  the  whole  multitude 
were  gathered  together  with  one  accord  into  the  broad  place  before  the 


EZRA  II  AND  III  373 

porch  of  the  temple  toward  the  east ;  and  they  said  unto  Esdraa  the  priest 
and  reader,  Bring  the  law  of  Moses,  that  was  given  of  the  Lord,  the  God 
of  Israel. 

This  passage  stands  at  the  beginning  of  a  narrative  which 
is  practically  the  same  as  the  narrative  in  the  book  of  Nehemiah, 
chapter  viii.  2-12  ;  and  it  follows  a  narrative  which  is  practically 
the  same  as  that  of  the  concluding  chapters  of  the  book  of  Ezra  ; 
the  whole  personal  narrative  of  Nehemiah  being  omitted  (as  I 
remarked  above)  in  the  first  book  of  Esdras.  It  would  seem 
that  the  personal  narrative  of  Nehemiah  originally  existed  as 
a  document  separate,  not  only  from  the  book  of  Ezra,  but  also 
from  the  chapters  of  Nehemiah  from  the  eighth  to  the  eleventh 
inclusive. 

Now  let  the  reader  understand  that  the  crucial  point  in 
the  present  argument  is  this  :  Was  the  passage  which  teUs 
us  how  "  the  priests  and  the  Levites  &c.,  dwelt  in  their  cities  " 
(or  in  their  "  villages,"  or  in  their  "  habitations  "),  and  how  in 
the  seventh  month  they  all  gathered  themselves  together  "  as 
one  man  "  (or  "  with  one  consent  "  or  *'  with  one  accord  ") — a 
passage  which  up  to  a  certain  point  is  practically  the  same  in 
aU  the  four  versions  of  it  which  I  have  quoted — originally  intended 
to  apply  to  an  incident  in  the  reign  of  Cyrus,  or  to  an  incident 
in  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes  and  in  the  time  of  Nehemiah?  The 
book  of  Ezra  very  distinctly  applies  it  to  an  incident  in  the  reign 
of  Cyrus,  approximately  about  538  B.C.  The  book  of  Nehemiah, 
and  the  last  chapter  of  the  first  book  of  Esdras,  with  equal 
distinctness  apply  it  to  an  incident  in  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes 
(some  Artaxerxes — and  in  the  case  of  the  earliest  Artaxerxes, 
the  date  would  be  445  B.C.).  But  what  says  the  fifth  chapter 
of  the  first  book  of  Esdras,  which  is  the  remaining  chapter  in 
which  this  passage  occurs  (in  verses  46  and  47  of  that  chapter)  ? 
It  may  at  first  sight  be  thought  that  the  fifth  chapter  of  the 
first  book  of  Esdras  applies  the  passage  to  the  reign  of  Cyrus, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  whole  narrative  is  imbedded  in  the 
reign  of  Darius ;  for  Cyrus  is  mentioned  as  king  several  times 
afterwards  in  the  chapter.  But  let  us  look  more  closely  into 
this  chapter.  Note  first  the  39th  and  40th  verses  of  it,  which 
run  thus  : 

And  when  the  description  of  the  kindred  of  these  men  was  sought 
in  the  register,  and  was  not  foiuid,  they  were  removed  from  executing 
the  office  of  the  priesthood  :  for  unto  them  said  Nehemias  and  Attharias, 
that  they  should  not  be  partakers  of  the  holy  things,  till  there  arose  up 
a  high  priest  wearing  Urim  and  Thummim. 


374  APPENDIX   I    TO    CHAPTER   XIV 

The  corresponding  verses  in  the  second  chapter  of  Ezra  (the 
62nd  and  63rd)  run  thus  : 

These  sought  their  register  among  those  that  were  reckoned  by  gene- 
alogy, but  they  were  not  foimd  :  therefore  were  they  deemed  polluted 
and  put  from  the  priesthood.  And  the  Tirshatha  said  unto  them,  that 
they  should  not  eat  of  the  most  holy  things,  till  there  stood  up  a  priest 
with  Urim  and  Thiunmim. 

It  will  be  seen  that  *'  the  Tirshatha  "  in  the  passage  from  Ezra 
corresponds  to  "  Nehemias  and  Attharias  "  in  the  first  book 
of  Esdras.  Is  not  then  Nehemias  (or  Nehemiah)  the  Tirshatha 
(i.e.  the  governor),  and  Attharias  another  high  official — the 
same  doubtless  as  the  Attharates  who  is  mentioned  in  1  Esdras 
ix.  49  as  addressing  Esdras  (i.e.  Ezra)  and  the  Levites  ?  If  this 
be  so,  the  catalogue  in  1  Esdras  v.,  and  the  verses  immediately 
after  the  termination  of  the  catalogue,  are  really  intended  to 
refer  to  the  time  of  Nehemiah,  and  not  to  the  time  of  Cyrus. 
It  may  be  added  that  the  title  "Tirshatha"  is  never  applied 
by  name  to  anyone  except  Nehemiah  (and  to  him  the  title  is 
applied  in  Nehemiah  viii.  9  and  x.  1)  ;  though  of  course  those 
who  believe  that  the  second  chapter  of  Ezra  relates  to  the 
time  of  Cyrus  are  bound  to  say  that  the  "  Tirshatha  "  in  that 
chapter  means  Zerubbabel.  But  they  can  give  no  other  instance 
in  which  Zerubbabel  is  called  by  this  title. 

It  will  be  admitted  that  the  mention  of  Nehemias  in  1  Esdras 
V.  40,  and  the  evident  fact  that  he  is  regarded  as  the  governor 
at  the  time  to  which  the  incident  refers,  is  strong  evidence 
that  the  catalogue  in  this  chapter  belongs  more  nearly  to  the 
time  of  Nehemiah  and  king  Artaxerxes  than  to  the  time  of  king 
Cyrus.  Let  us  see  whether  the  chapter  does  not  supply  us  with 
other  evidence  to  this  effect.     Take  the  47th  verse  of  the  chapter  : 

But  when  the  seventh  month  was  at  hand,  and  when  the  cliildren 
of  Israel  were  every  man  in  his  own  place,  they  came  all  together  with 
one  consent  into  the  broad  place  before  the  first  porch  which  is  toward 
the  east. 

What  porch  is  meant  here  ?  In  that  other  version  of  this 
passage  which  we  find  in  the  ninth  chapter  of  this  book  (verse  38) 
the  porch  is  expli(;itly  said  to  be  the  porch  of  the  temple  ;  and 
plainly  we  must  understand  the  porch  of  the  temple  in  the  fifth 
chapter  also.  It  is  certainly  preferable  then  to  regard  the  fifth 
chapter  as  dating  from  a  time  when  the  porch  of  the  temple 
existed  ;  which  it  did  not  immediately  after  the  return  in  the 
reign  of  Cyrus,  but  which  it  did  in  the  time  of  Nehemiah.     This 


EZRA   II  AND   III  375 

argument  has  not  equal  weight  with  the  argument  drawn  from 
the  mention  of  Nehemias  in  the  40th  verse  of  the  chapter,  but 
some  weight  it  has  ;  for  in  the  time  of  Cyrus,  to  which  1  Esdras 
V.  47  professes  to  belong,  the  porch  of  the  temple  was  in  ruins, 
together  with  the  whole  temple  ;  and  if  it  were  mentioned  at 
all,  it  might  be  expected  that  some  mention  of  the  fact  that  it 
was  in  ruins  would  be  made.  Or,  even  more  probably,  it  would 
have  been  said,  "  they  came  altogether  with  one  consent  into 
the  broad  place  before  the  ruined  temple."  As  there  is  no  mention 
of  so  important  a  fact,  but  as  on  the  contrary  the  phrase  is 
practically  the  same  as  in  verse  38  of  the  ninth  chapter  (which 
refers  to  a  time  when  the  porch  of  the  temple  was  in  existence) ; 
is  not  the  inference  of  real  weight  that  the  passage  in  the  ninth 
chapter  is  the  original,  the  passage  in  the  fifth  chapter  a  copy 
of  it  ? 

Taking  these  two  facts  into  account — the  mention  of  Nehemias 
and  Attharias  in  the  40th  verse  of  the  fifth  chapter,  and  the 
mention  of  "  the  first  porch  which  is  toward  the  east  "  in  the 
47th  verse  of  the  same  chapter — is  not  the  inference  exceedingly 
strong  that  the  original  intention  of  the  whole  passage  was  to 
describe  something  which  took  place,  not  in  the  reign  of  Cyrus, 
but  in  the  time  of  Nehemiah;  and  is  not  the  result  of  this  to 
separate  definitely  the  catalogue  itself  from  the  time  of  Cyrus? 
But  if  so,  the  inference  follows  immediately  that  the  catalogue 
in  the  second  chapter  of  Ezra  is  definitely  separated  from  the 
time  of  Cyrus  ;  for  this  is  substantially  the  same  as  the  catalogue 
in  1  Esdras  v.  The  compiler  of  the  book  of  Ezra  has  been  a 
little  more  successful  than  the  compiler  of  the  first  book  of  Esdras 
in  concealing  the  source  from  which  his  catalogue  was  derived ; 
but  the  two  stand  or  fall  together^. 

And  now  let  me  make  the  attempt  to  show  how  those  very 
critical  parts  of  the  books  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  on  which  I 
have  been  commenting — Ezra  ii.  iii.  iv.  1-5  and  Nehemiah  vii. 
and  viii. — came  into  being  ;  and  through  what  influences  and 
under  what  motives  the  bungle  which  I  pointed  out  at  the 
beginning  of  this  Appendix  originated.  The  reader  will  bear 
in  mind  that  it  is  much  easier  to  demonstrate  an  error  than  to 
say  how  the  error  arose  ;  but  still  \\dthin  limits  I  believe  that 
the  latter  also  may  be  done  in  the  present  case. 

^  It  is  worth  mentioning  (and  the  remark  is  due  to  the  late  Dr  Driver)  that  the 
"  seventh  montli  "  in  Nehemiah  vii.  73  is  in  the  right  continuance  upon  the  "  month 
Elul  "  (the  sixth  month)  in  Nehemiah  vi.  15  :  so  that  Nehemiah  vii.  73  appears  to 
be  in  situ  where  it  stands. 


376  APPENDIX   I    TO    CHAPTER   XIV 

In  the  first  place  then,  I  assume  the  genuineness  of  the  personal 
narrative  of  Nehemiah,  from  the  beginning  of  the  book  down 
to  the  end  of  the  fifth  verse  of  the  seventh  chapter  ;  and  I  assume 
that  the  catalogue  which  occupies  nearly  the  whole  of  the  remainder 
of  the  seventh  chapter,  from  the  words  "  The  number  of  the  men 
of  the  people  of  Israel  "  in  verse  7  down  to  the  end  of  verse  69 
is  (as  it  professes  to  be)  the  catalogue  which  lay  before  the  eyes 
of  Nehemiah,  except  the  slight  additions,  in  verses  61,  64,  and 
65,  which  were  inserted  owing  to  Nehemiah  himself  discovering 
that  certain  families  were  of  doubtful  descent,  whether  as  Israelites 
or  as  priests.  How  this  personal  narrative  of  Nehemiah  came  to 
be  interposed  in  the  middle  of  a  narrative  about  Ezra,  which 
in  part  is  a  personal  narrative  of  Ezra  himself,  is  a  question 
which  need  not  be  discussed  here.  But  it  is  of  importance  to 
know  what  was  the  date  of  the  catalogue  which  Nehemiah  tells 
us  that  he  found,  and  which  he  describes  as  "  the  book  of  the 
genealogy  of  them  which  came  up  at  the  first,"  and  wliich  we 
have  now  before  us  in  the  seventh  chapter  of  the  book  of 
Nehemiah. 

The  ordinary  view,  which  places  Zerubbabel's  return  to 
Jerusalem  in  538  B.C.,  and  Nehemiah's  return  in  445  B.C.,  places 
an  interval  of  ninety- three  years  between  the  date  of  the  drawing  up 
of  the  catalogue  and  the  date  when  Nehemiah  made  use  of  it  for 
his  own  purposes.  I  cannot  but  think  that  an  interval  of  ninety- 
three  years,  and  those  troubled  years,  as  we  know  from  the  book 
of  Ezra  itself,  must  have  made  such  a  catalogue  of  very  little 
utility.  But  according  to  my  view,  Zerubbabel  returned  in 
423  B.C.,  and  Nehemiah  in  385  B.C.  ;  and  the  intervening  years, 
though  not  without  trouble,  had  not  been  years  of  extreme 
distress  ;  it  is  conceivable  that  a  catalogue  thirty-eight  years  old 
might  give  Nehemiah  real  information.  I  understand  that  by  the 
phrase  "  them  which  came  up  at  the  first  "  is  intended  "  those 
who  came  up  with  Zerubbabel."  It  is  true  that,  according  to 
my  reading  of  the  history,  that  was  not  the  first  return  of  the 
Jews  from  Babylon  ;  but  it  was  the  first  fully  successful  return  ; 
the  first  return  that  took  place  under  the  favouring  influence  of 
a  Persian  king,  and  with  real  promise  of  a  restoration  of  the  .Jewish 
state.  "  Those  who  returned  at  the  first  "'  were  in  Nehemiah's 
eyes  "  tho.se  who  returned  with  Zerubbabel." 

But  not  so  simple  us  tfiis  was  the  interpretation  given  to  the 
words  "  at  the  first  "  by  a  .Jewish  annahst  of  the  third  century  B.C., 
who  was  .seeking  for  materials  for  writing  Jewish  history  from 


EZRA  II  AND  III  377 

the  end  of  the  Babylonian  captivity  onwards.  This  annalist 
had  in  his  mind  the  famous  fact  that  Cyrus  was  the  king  who 
first  gave  permission  to  the  Jews  to  return  from  Babylon  to  Jeru- 
salem, and  under  whom  they  actually  did  begin  to  return.  The 
annaHst,  knowing  this,  endeavoured  to  find  testimony  which 
should  amplify  and  adorn  this  bare  statement.  He  possessed 
the  first  chapter  of  the  book  of  Ezra ;  but  that  chapter  seemed 
to  him,  as  imdoubtedly  it  is,  exceedingly  meagre  ;  and  he  sought 
for  more  information.  It  never  for  a  moment  occurred  to  him 
to  look  into  the  book  of  Isaiah,  or  into  the  psalms,  for  evidence 
of  what  happened  at  such  a  period  ;  these  two  books,  which 
would  have  given  him  much  information,  he  absolutely  ignored. 
But  he  did  possess  Nehemiah's  personal  narrative,  and  his  cata- 
logue ;  and  he  read  what  Nehemiah  had  said,  that  this  catalogue 
was  the  list  of  those  who  came  up  "  at  the  first."  Immediately 
our  annaHst  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  these  were  those 
who  returned  under  Cyrus ;  and  believing  also  (and  in  this  point 
correctly)  that  by  those  who  returned  at  the  first  Nehemiah  had 
meant  those  who  returned  under  Zerubbabel,  our  annalist  made 
Zerubbabel  return  under  Cyrus.  His  knowledge  of  Persian  kings 
was  meagre  ;  he  knew  nothing  of  Cambyses,  nor  (according  to  my 
view)  of  Darius  son  of  Hystaspes  ;  and  he  saw  nothing  improbable 
in  believing  that  Zerubbabel  had  returned  under  Cyrus  and  had 
finally  built  the  temple  under  Darius  Nothus.  That  is  the 
statement  of  the  book  of  Ezra  as  we  have  it,  and  the  length  of 
life  which  it  implies  in  Zerubbabel  is  plainly  impossible  ;  but 
our  annahst  did  not  know  it  to  be  impossible.  Hence,  very 
rashly,  but  not  with  absolute  bad  faith,  he  took  Nehemiah's 
catalogue,  prefixed  an  observation  to  it,  and  made  it  the  con- 
tinuation of  the  first  chapter  of  Ezra,  although  not  writing 
it  on  the  same  roll  on  which  the  first  chapter  of  Ezra  was  written. 
The  document  which  he  wrote  was  an  independent  document, 
as  we  see  from  the  fact  that  when  it  (or  a  copy  of  it)  came  into 
the  hands  of  the  two  compilers  who  respectively  wrote  Ezra 
and  1  Esdras,  these  two  compilers  placed  it  differently,  as  was 
noted  in  an  earher  part  of  this  Appendix. 

Now  let  us  see  how  our  annaHst  treated  the  catalogue  which 
he  was  transcribing.  I  have  said  that  he  prefixed  an  observation 
to  it ;  this  observation  consisted  of  the  words  which  we  now 
find  in  Nehemiah  vii.  6,  7,  from  "  These  are  the  children  of  the 
province  "  down  to  the  name  "  Baanah  "  ;  and  it  will  be  seen 
that  our  annalist,  in  a  loose  sort  of  way,  put  down  Nehemiah 


378  APPENDIX   I    TO    CHAPTER   XIV 

a8  returning  with  Zembbabel  and  Jeshua.  I  know  of  course 
that  the  name  "  Nehemiah  "  was  owned  by  more  than  one  person, 
but  it  is  probable  from  the  position  which  the  name  occupies 
in  the  book  of  Nehemiah  vii.  7,  that  the  well-known  Nehemiah 
is  the  one  there  meant.  Thus  our  annalist  transcribed  his 
catalogue  ;  but  he  was  under  some  real  difficulty  as  to  where 
the  catalogue  ended ^  The  catalogue,  together  with  the  personal 
narrative  of  Nehemiah,  was  in  the  third  century  imbedded,  as 
it  is  now,  in  the  middle  of  the  history  of  Ezra  (which  also  is  in 
part  a  personal  narrative).  So,  being  in  doubt  where  to  stop, 
our  annaUst  found  himself  carried  on  past  the  true  catalogue, 
until  after  transcribing  the  words  "  And  all  the  people  gathered 
themselves  together  as  one  man  "  he  found  that  he  was  approach- 
ing the  history  of  Ezra.  Now  he  knew  very  well  that  it  was 
not  the  history  of  Ezra  that  he  wished  to  tell,  but  the  history 
of  Zerubbabel  and  Jeshua.  However,  it  was  not  his  way  to 
scratch  out  what  he  had  once  written  ;  what  he  had  written 
was  not  palpably  false  ;  and  it  served  him  very  well  as  an  introduc- 
tion to  the  history  which  he  proceeded  to  give.  So  he  went  on 
to  relate  what,  though  he  had  no  evidence  for  it,  he  thought 
must  have  happened  ;  the  erection  of  the  altar  of  burnt  offerings, 
the  celebration  of  the  feast  of  tabernacles  (the  mention  of  the 
"  seventh  month  "  in  the  passage  which  he  had  transcribed  gave 
him  the  hint  for  this)  and  the  laying  of  the  foundation  of  the 
temple  ;  and  then  the  breach  with  the  Samaritans  which  (he 
thought)  prevented  the  temple  from  being  completed.  Thus, 
out  of  exceedingly  slight  materials,  he  made  a  highly  respectable 
narrative. 

Let  the  reader  carefully  consider  this  analysis  of  the  passage 
under  consideration  (Ezra  ii.  iii.  iv.  1-5  or  1  Esdras  v.  7-73) 
and  see  whether  it  does  not  afford  a  full  and  natural  explanation 
of  the  binigle  which  I  noted  at  the  beginning  of  this  Appendix, 
and  which  I  have  continually  referred  to  since  -the  bungle  of 
transferring  verses  which  originally  applied  to  one  period  of  liistory, 
for  the  purpose  of  describing  another  period  of  history.  It  is 
an  essential  j)art  of  the  j)roof  that  the  whole  passage  referred 
to  was  not  originally  in  the  position  which  it  now  occupies  ; 
this  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  its  present  place  in  Ezra  is 
different   from   its    present   place  in   1  Esdras,  and   also  by  the 

'  It  is  difficult  tt)  ho  sure  whctlicr  the  vorsos  Nehciniali  vii.  70-72  originally  coii- 
tain«l  a  mention  of  the  ttriipic  as  Ezra  ii.  tIS,  ♦iSi  dots  (in  wliiclj  case  they  helong  to 
the  true  catalntiue),  or  wliethcr  fhey  arc  correct  as  they  stand,  and  the  mention  of  tite 
temple  in  Ezra  ii.  US,  (ill  an  interix)lation.     I  incline  to  the  latt^^^r  opinion. 


EZRA  II  AND   III  379 

fact  that  it  is  palpably  not  in  agreement  with  the  first 
chapter  of  Ezra,  and  is  inconsistent  with  the  whole  tenor 
of  its  context.  This  fact  compels  us  to  consider  how  the 
whole  passage  came  into  being  ;  and  the  expressions  noted  in 
1  Esdras  v.  40  and  47  prove  that  that  chapter  originally  described 
what  was  happening  in  the  time  of  Nehemiah  (the  catalogue 
belonging  to  a  time  thirty-eight  years  earlier)  and  had  nothing  at  all 
to  do  with  the  reign  of  Cyrus.  The  transference  of  it  to  the  reign 
of  Cyrus  was  an  illegitimate  act  of  the  historian  (or  the  annaUst, 
as  I  have  called  him) ;  though,  as  I  think  I  have  shown,  a  natural 
act,  and  not,  when  the  manner  of  writing  history  in  those  times 
is  considered,  an  act  very  greatly  to  be  censured.  And  of  course 
Ezra  ii.  iii.  iv.  1-5  being  the  same  passage  as  1  Esdras  v.  7-73 
(only  in  Hebrew  instead  of  in  Greek)  falls  along  with  it. 

How  can  it  be  denied  after  this  that  the  plain  testimony 
of  the  books  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  (which  originally  constituted 
one  book)  is  that  the  rebuilding  of  the  temple  by  Zerubbabel 
took  place  in  the  reign  of  Darius  Nothus,  or  in  other  words  from 
the  year  422  B.C.  to  the  year  418  B.C.  ?  When  the  passage  on  which 
I  have  been  commenting  is  eliminated,  the  testimony  of  these 
books  is  perfectly  clear ;  and  even  more  clear,  if  possible,  is  the 
testimony  of  the  first  book  of  Esdras,  which  distinctly  says 
that  Zerubbabel  returned  in  the  reign  of  some  Darius,  though 
afterwards  in  the  interpolated  passage  it  implies  that  Zerubbabel 
returned  in  the  reign  of  Cjrrus. 

Why  should  not  this  simple  piece  of  testimony  be  accepted  ? 
What  is  there  to  be  said  against  it  ?  Two  expressions,  one  in 
the  prophet  Haggai,  the  other  in  the  prophet  Zechariah,  may 
at  first  sight  appear  as  a  difficulty,  but  I  think  I  have  fully 
explained  them  in  the  chapter  to  which  this  Appendix  belongs. 
Let  me,  however,  now  mention  another  objection  on  which 
great  stress  is  laid.  Zerubbabel  is  called  the  son  of  Shealtiel, 
who  was  the  son  of  that  king  Jehoiachin  who  surrendered  to 
Nebuchadnezzar  in  the  year  598  B.C.,  and  who  after  thirty-six  or 
thirty- seven  years  of  captivity  was  set  free  by  the  successor  of 
Nebuchadnezzar,  Evil-merodach.  That  is  to  say,  Jehoiachin  was 
set  free  about  the  year  562  or  561  B.C.,  being  then  fifty-four  or 
fifty-five  years  of  age.  It  is  not  likely  then  that  Shealtiel  was  born 
later  than  550  B.C.  ;  and  though  it  is  not  quite  impossible  that 
he  might  have  a  son  still  alive  and  vigorous  in  422  B.C.,  it  is 
not  likely.  Still  greater  appears  the  difficulty  in  the  case  of  the 
high  priest  Joshua  or  Jeshua,  who  is  called  the  son  of  Jozadak  (or 


380  APPENDIX   I    TO    CHAPTER   XIV 

Jehozadak).  For  Jozadak  was  the  son  of  that  high  priest  Seraiah 
who  was  put  to  death  by  Nebuchadnezzar  in  the  year  586  B.C. 
(2  Kings  XXV.  18-21).  It  certainly  is  impossible  that  a  son  of 
Jozadak  could  be  alive  and  active  in  the  year  422  B.C.  But  those 
who  urge  these  difficulties  take  no  note  of  the  fact  that,  while 
an  even  greater  difficulty  occurs  in  the  case  of  Ezra,  the 
explanation  of  it  in  the  case  of  Ezra  is  fully  sufficient  to  explain 
it  in  the  cases  of  Zerubbabel  and  of  Jeshua  also.  Ezra  is 
called  the  son  of  that  same  Seraiah  who  was  put  to  death  by 
Nebuchadnezzar.  (For  the  proof  that  it  is  this  Seraiah  of  whom 
Ezra  is  called  the  son,  compare  1  Chronicles  vi.  4-14  with  Ezra  vii. 
1-5).  Now  the  earliest  date  at  which  the  arrival  of  Ezra  at 
Jerusalem  can  possibly  be  placed  is  457  B.C.,  so  that  on  this 
showing  Ezra  must  have  been  at  that  time  at  least  129  years  old ! 
How  are  we  to  explain  the  apparent  error  ?  By  the  simple 
consideration,  which  is  as  applicable  to  the  cases  of  Zerubbabel 
and  Jeshua  as  to  the  case  of  Ezra,  that  the  word  "  son  "  means 
"  descendant."  Moreover,  we  know  quite  well  why  the  inter- 
mediate steps,  between  Shealtiel  and  Zerubbabel,  between 
Jozadak  and  Jeshua,  between  Seraiah  and  Ezra,  were  omitted 
by  those  who  referred  to  these  personages.  The  Jews  never 
willingly  recognised  any  deed  done  during  the  time  of  the  Baby- 
lonian captivity,  or  any  person  whose  life  lay  during  that  time. 
It  may  perhaps  seem  that  the  prophet  Ezekiel  is  an  exception 
to  this  statement,  but  he  is  not  a  true  exception  ;  for  the  greater 
part  of  his  prophecies  were  written  before  the  captivity  in  its 
full  extent  began.  Shealtiel  indeed  is  a  true  exception  ;  he  owes 
his  being  named  to  the  fact  that  his  father  was  honoured  by  the 
king  Evil-merodach.  But  the  greatest  proof  that  the  Jews  were 
determined  to  keep  silence  on  all  who  lived  in  the  time  of  the 
captivity  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  great  prophet  who  wrote  the 
last  twenty-seven  chapters  of  the  book  of  Isaiah  was  never 
recognised  by  them  as  an  individual  at  all.  That  prophet  does 
describe  the  first  return  from  the  captivity,  but  the  phrases 
in  which  he  describes  it  were  ignored  by  the  Jews  of  after  times  ; 
they  were  willing  enough  to  accept  his  exalted  prophecies,  but 
for  his  personality  they  had  no  regard,  and  the  unhappy  and 
partial  kind  of  return  wliich  he  describes  in  the  later  chapters 
of  his  prophecy,  appeared  derogatory  to  their  self-esteem.  Had 
he  been  able  to  describe  a  brilliant  return,  in  which  the  Jews 
were  honoured  by  the  monarchs  of  the  world,  we  should  have 
known  his  name.     But  it  was  impossible  that  he  could  do  any 


EZRA  II  AND  III  381 

such  thing  ;  and  hence  the  Jews,  while  aware  of  the  exalted 
character  of  his  writings,  were  oblivious  of  his  personahty.  We 
cannot  then  be  surprised  that,  in  speaking  of  the  ancestry  of 
Zerubbabel,  Jeshua,  and  Ezra,  they  omitted  all  mention  of  their 
near  ancestors,  and  went  straight  to  the  ancestor  who  connected 
these  important  persons  with  the  great  kings  and  priests  who 
were  of  old. 

What  other  objections  are  there  to  putting  Zerubbabel  under 
Darius  Nothus,  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  under  Artaxerxes  Mnemon  ? 
It  is  confidently  said  that  the  Aramaic  papyri  of  Assuan  give 
evidence  of  the  earUer  date  ;  that  the  SinubaUit  of  the  papyri, 
who  was  governor  of  Samaria  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fifth  century 
B.C.,  must  be  the  same  as  the  Sanballat  of  the  book  of  Nehemiah 
(who  in  this  case  must  have  Uved  in  the  fifth  century  B.C.) ; 
that  the  high  priest  Jehohanan  of  the  papyri,  whose  date  was 
411  B.C.,  must  be  the  same  as  the  Johanan,  who  was  grandson  of  the 
high  priest  Eliashib,  and  who  is  mentioned  in  Nehemiah  xii.  22  as 
among  the  high  priests  ;  from  which  it  would  follow  that  EUashib 
lived  in  the  fifth  century  B.C.,  and  therefore  that  Ezra  and 
Nehemiah,  his  contemporaries,  hved  in  that  century.  But  with 
respect  to  Sinubalht,  those  who  use  this  argument  forget  that 
the  SinubaUit  of  the  papyri  was  friendly  to  the  Jews,  as  is  proved 
both  by  the  fact  that  the  Jews  of  Syene  (or  Assuan)  addressed 
an  appeal  to  him,  and  also  by  the  fact  that  Delaja,  the  son  of 
this  SinubaUit,  joined  with  Bagohi,  the  governor  of  Judsea, 
in  answering  this  appeal,  and  moreover  answering  it  in  such  a 
way  as  to  save  the  religious  feeUngs  of  the  Jews  of  Jerusalem 
in  the  highest  degree.  Surely  the  SinubaUit  of  the  Aramaic 
papyri  was  not  the  Sanballat  of  the  book  of  Nehemiah  !  But 
with  respect  to  Jehohanan,  I  admit  that  this  name,  in  itself, 
would  be  an  argument  for  the  earUer  date  ;  for  according  to 
my  view  of  the  chronology,  there  is  no  known  Jehohanan,  or 
Johanan,  to  fill  the  place  of  high  priest  at  the  date  indicated 
by  the  Assuan  papyri,  whereas  there  is  such  a  Johanan  according 
to  the  chronology  which  puts  Ezra  in  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes 
Longimanus.  My  view  of  the  chronology  requires  that  there 
shaU  have  been  a  high  priest  Johanan,  or  Jehohanan,  at  about 
that  place  where  the  twelfth  chapter  of  Nehemiah  (verses  10 
and  26)  puts  Joiakim.  It  is  possible  that  a  name  may  have 
slipped  out  of  the  list ;  or  it  is  possible  that  the  priest  Jehohanan 
(whom  we  know  from  Nehemiah  xii.  13  to  have  Uved  in  the  days 
of  Joiakim)  may  have  temporarily  discharged  the  functions  of 


382  APPENDIX   I    TO    CHAPTER   XIV 

high  priest ;  and  it  is  even  possible  that  in  Ezra  x.  6,  where  the 
present  reading  is  "  Jehohanan  the  son  of  Eliashib,"  there  has 
been  a  wrong  addition  of  these  latter  words,  and  that "  Jehohanan  " 
alone  should  be  read  ;  in  which  case  Jehohanan  might  naturally 
be  understood  to  be  the  high  priest  at  that  time  and  for  some 
years  previously.  I  cannot  say  with  certainty  what  precise 
answer  is  to  be  given  to  this  objection  to  my  view  ;  but  I  think 
the  objection  is  practically  upset  by  the  observation  which  I  will 
now  proceed  to  make.  In  the  twelfth  chapter  of  Nehemiah,  verses 
10  and  11,  the  list  of  high  priests  is  given  in  the  following  terms : 

And  Jeshua  begat  Joiakim,  and  Joiakim  begat  Eliashib,  and  Eliashib 
begat  Joiada,  and  Joiada  begat  Jonathan,  and  Jonathan  begat  Jaddua. 

The  last  four  of  these  liigh  priests  are  mentioned  again  (Johanan 

taking  the  place  of  Jonathan)  in  verse  22,  which  I  will  quote  : 

The  Levntes  in  the  days  of  Eliashib,  Joiada,  and  Johanan,  and  Jaddua, 
were  recorded  heads  of  fathers'  houses  :  also  the  priests,  in  (or  to)  the 
reign  of  Darius  the  Persian.     Nehemiah  xii.  22. 

Why  "  Darius  the  Persian,"  and  not  "  Darius  king  of  Persia," 
wliich  is  the  phrase  everywhere  else  (except  where  it  is  simply 
"  Darius  the  king  ")  ?  I  answer,  because  it  was  intended  to 
contrast  him  with  the  Greek  kings  who  came  after  the  Persian 
kings  ;  under  one  of  which  Greek  kings  the  compiler  of  the  books 
of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  lived.  It  was  natural  to  use  this  expression, 
implying  such  a  contrast  as  this,  with  respect  to  the  last  Persian 
king,  Darius  Codomannus ;  it  would  not  have  been  natural 
to  apply  it  to  Darius  Nothus,  who  reigned  in  the  middle  of  the 
series  of  Persian  kings.  The  only  other  instances  that  I  can 
find  of  a  similar  expression  are  in  the  book  of  Daniel,  and  in  each 
of  these  a  similar  reason  exists  ;  there  is  an  intention  of  contrasting 
a  king  of  one  race  with  a  king,  directly  sequent  or  precedent 
in  time,  of  another  race.  Let  me  quote  the  passages  ;  the  first 
is  Daniel  v.  30,  31  : 

In  that  night  Belshazzar  the  Chaldean  king  was  slain.  And  Darius 
the  Mede  received  the  kingdom,  being  about  threescore  and  two  years  old. 

I  need  not  discuss  the  history  of  this  passage  ;  all  that  I 
am  concenied  with  now  is  the  phrase  "  Darius  the  Mede,"  which 
evidently  is  introduced  because  a  change  in  the  nationality 
of  the  king  was  to  be  marked  ;  and  the  same  is  the  case  in  the 
30th  verse  of  the  same  chapter,  where  another  change  in  the 
nationality  of   the  dynasty  occurs  : 

So  this  Daniel  prospered  in  the  reign  of  Darius,  and  in  the  reign  of 
Cyrus  the  I'ersian. 


EZRA  II  AND   III  383 

Exactly  in  a  similar  way  "  Darius  the  Persian  "  is  used  in 
Nehemiah  xii.  22,  because  the  writer  has  in  his  mind  the  change 
in  the  nationaUty  of  the  dynasty  which  ensued  after  the  reign 
of  this  king  Darius,  who  therefore  must  be  Darius  Codomannus, 
whose  reign  lasted  from  336  B.C.  to  331  B.C.,  after  which  date 
Alexander  of  Macedon  obtained  sovereignty  over  the  Persian 
empire. 

Now  in  view  of  this  meaning  of  "  Darius  the  Persian  "  in 
Nehemiah  xii.  22  (quoted  above),  it  becomes  clear  that  Jaddua, 
the  last  of  the  high  priests  mentioned  in  this  verse,  Uved  in  the 
reign  of  Darius  Codomannus,  which  is  exactly  what  Josephus 
tells  us  ;  and  this  makes  it  plain  also  that  the  Johanan  who 
was  the  high  priest  immediately  preceding  Jaddua,  and  who 
was  the  grandson  of  EUashib,  was  not  the  Jehohanan  who  was 
high  priest  in  411  B.C.  of  whom  the  papyri  of  Assuan  tell  us. 
The  last  objection  then  to  putting  the  high  priests  Eliashib, 
Joiada,  and  Johanan  in  the  fourth  century  before  Christ,  rather 
than  in  the  fifth  century,  is  thus  removed ;  and  the  whole 
chronology  for  which  I  have  been  contending  is  vindicated. 

To  conclude.  Let  the  reader  consider  how  in  the  chapter 
to  which  this  Appendix  belongs,  and  in  this  Appendix  itself, 
I  have  placed  various  Biblical  books,  two  important  chapters 
in  the  Antiquities  of  Josephus,  and  the  Aramaic  papyri  of  Assuan, 
in  an  order  which  makes  them  eloquent  of  the  history  of  the 
Jewish  nation  ;  that  I  have  presented  more  than  two  centuries 
of  that  history,  from  538  B.C.  to  320  B.C.,  in  clear  light,  whereas 
those  who  maintain  that  Zerubbabel  returned  in  the  reign  of 
Cyrus  wander  in  unintelligible  labyrinths  of  darkness,  and  cannot 
say  anything  at  all  of  what  happened  to  the  Jews  in  the  fourth 
century  before  Christ  (for  they  have  to  give  up  Josephus  as 
wholly  untrustworthy).  Can  there  be  any  doubt  that  the  history 
as  I  have  narrated  it  is  the  true  history  ?  The  Biblical  books 
that  I  have  placed  in  proper  order,  and  interpreted  in  clear  and 
natural  historical  sequence,  are  these  :  First,  the  last  twenty- 
seven  chapters  of  the  book  which  is  called  the  book  of  Isaiah,  which 
show  the  faithful  Jews,  animated  by  the  extraordinary  fervour 
and  grandeur  of  conception  shown  by  this  great  prophet,  beginning 
to  reestablish  themselves  in  Jerusalem,  under  extraordinary 
difficulties ;  for  the  surrounding  nations  looked  upon  them 
with  disfavour,  they  were  few  in  number,  and  many  of  the  Jews 
themselves  looked  upon  this  enterprise  of  a  return  to  Jerusalem 
as  quixotic  and  impossible.     Moreover,  some  of  the  Jews  were 


384  APPENDIX   I    TO    CHAPTER   XIV 

still  prone  to  idolatry.     The  only  historical  passage  of  the  Bible 
which  relates  to  this  particular  time  is  the  first  chapter  of  Ezra, 
which  is  quite  credible  but  very  scanty  in  its  information  ;    it 
is  to  be  noted  that  it  does  not  say  that  Cyrus  gave  the  Jews 
material  help  ;    and  such  help  as  was  given  the  returning  exiles 
was  given  them  by  their  own  fellow-countrymen  who  were  not 
yet  prepared  to  return.     This  indeed  is  not  expressly  said,  but 
must  be  understood  to  be  the  meaning  of  verses  4  and  6  of  this 
chapter.     After  this,   to  understand  the  difficulties  which   the 
Jews  underwent  in  their  partially  recovered  country,  we  have 
to  take  the  book  of  Psalms,  all  the  early  part  of  which  book 
(with  some  exceptions)  is  full  of  suffering  and  conflict,  though 
we  perceive  that  the  Jews  had  rebuilt  their  temple  ;    but  the 
temple  so  rebuUt  was  destroyed,  as  we  see  from  Psalms  Ixxiv.  and 
Ixxix.     It  is  natural  to  connect  this  event  with  the  troubles  which 
are  faintly  referred  to  in  one  verse  of  the  book  of  Ezra  (iv.  6) 
and  of  which  the  book  of  Esther  professes  to  be  the  account, 
though  that  book  represents  the  final  triumph  of  the  Jews  as 
far  more  signal  and  complete  than  we  can  suppose  it  to  have 
been.     However,  the  Jews  did   survive ;    and   this  event  took 
place  in  the  reign  of  Ahasuerus  (or  Xerxes),  that  is  at  some  date 
between  485  B.C.  and  465  B.C.     After  this,  Ezra  iv.  7-24  carries 
us  through  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes  Longimanus  ;    after  which 
a  greater  collection  of  authorities  awaits  us.     Not  only  have  we 
the  book  of  Ezra,  chapters  v.  and  vi.  (and  the  parallel  passages 
in  the  first  book  of  Esdras  have  to  be  referred  to),  but  vvc  have 
also  the  prophets  Haggai  and  Zechariah,  and  a  large  number 
of  the  psalms,  beginning  with  the  84th  and  85th  and  then  most 
of  those  in  the  series  from  the  90th  to  the  138th  inclusive  ;    all 
these  books  refer  largely  to  the  temple  which  Zerubbabel  built 
with  full  permission  of  the  Persian  king  Darius  Nothus.     More- 
over, the  Aramaic  papyri  of  Assuan   give   us  furtlier  evidence 
of  the  interest  which  this  king  took  in  the  Jews  (as  I  have  stated 
on    page    353    above),    a   fact   which   falls    in   with   the  general 
course  of  the  evidence  here  given,  that  Darius  Nothus  was  the 
king   under   whom   Zerubbabel   rebuilt   the   temple.     After   this 
come  the  curious  facts  made  known  to  us  by  the  main  body  of 
the  Assuan  papyri,  from  which  it  is  clear  that  the  Samaritans 
were  not  at  this  time.  i.e.  in  the  year  407  B.C.,  on  the  whole, 
hostile  to  the  Jews.      P>ut   the  eleventh  chapter  of  the  prophet 
Zechariah  shows  us  trouble  impending,  and  the  good  feeling  whi(;h 
was  beginning  to  exist  between  the  Jews  and  the  surrounding 


EZRA  II  AND  III  385 

nations  (and  especially  the  Samaritans)  suddenly  endangered 
by  the  narrow  party  among  the  Jews.  This  narrowing  tendency 
was  brought  to  a  head  by  Ezra  ;  and  now  from  397  B.C.  to  nearly 
the  middle  of  the  fourth  centxiry  we  have  as  our  authorities 
the  book  of  Ezra  from  the  seventh  chapter  onwards,  and  also  the 
book  of  Nehemiah,  The  twelfth  chapter  of  the  book  of  Nehemiah 
does  indeed,  in  its  mention  of  the  high  priests  Johanan  and  Jaddua, 
carry  us  past  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century  ;  but  on  the  whole 
our  authority  for  the  latter  part  of  the  fourth  century  lies  in 
the  eleventh  book  of  the  Antiquities  of  Josephus,  in  the  last 
two  chapters  of  that  book. 

Such  are  our  authorities,  stated  in  order,  for  the  period  from 
538  B.C.  to  320  B.C.  ;  and  then  for  the  third  century  we  have 
to  depend  historically  on  Josephus  ;  but  the  third  century  was 
a  great  Hterary  period  apart  from  its  detailed  history. 

I  hope  that  my  elucidation  of  these  historical  events,  and 
of  the  literary  works  which  illustrate  them,  has  not  been  tedious. 
But  in  any  case,  the  conclusion  which  I  have  reached  is  one 
in  which  every  man  ought  to  take  an  interest.  That  conclusion 
is,  the  vindication  of  the  honour  of  the  bravest  and  most  en- 
lightened people  of  all  antiquity,  namely  the  Jews.  Never,  up 
to  the  present  day,  have  the  ancient  Jews  received  their  proper 
honour.  It  is  true  that  they  were  excelled  in  some  respects 
by  Greeks  and  Romans,  perhaps  by  some  other  ancient  nations  ; 
but  no  other  people  penetrated  as  they  did  into  the  very  heart 
of  divine  things.  It  is  true,  also,  that  they  became  narrow  ; 
but  the  difficulty  of  preserving  their  unity,  and  the  unity  of  their 
faith,  without  becoming  narrow,  was  very  great ;  we  cannot 
help  marking  their  fault,  but  they  well  deserve  that  we  should 
pardon  it. 


APPENDIX   II   TO   CHAPTER   XIV 

CONCERNING   THE   TITLES    TO    THE    PSALMS 

What  is  the  value  of  the  titles  prefixed  to  the  psalms  in  our 
Bible;  what  inferences  can  be  drawn  from  them;  at  what 
date  were  they  prefixed;  and  why  is  it  that  116  of  the  psalms 
have  titles,  while  the  remaining  34  have  not  got  them  ?  To 
take  the  last  question  first  :  the  omission  of  titles  is  in  a  few 
cases  accidental,  but  generally  the  psalms  without  a  title  would 

M.  D.A.  25 


386  APPENDIX   II    TO    CHAPTER   XIV 

be  psalms  admitted  into  the  volume  (or  let  me  say  into  one  of 
the  five  books  of  which  the  psalter  is  composed)  later  than  the 
rest.  The  psalms  without  a  title  are,  however,  not  necessarily 
of  later  composition  than  those  which  stand  by  their  side  in  the 
psalter;  in  a  few  cases  they  are  really  later,  but  not  generally. 
But  now  as  to  the  more  important  question,  how  the  titles  came 
into  existence  at  all.  We  observe  that  they  are  frequently  mixed 
up  with  instructions  as  to  the  singing  of  the  choir,  the  tune  or 
instruments  to  be  adopted  ;  and  this  leads  to  the  inference  that 
the  time  when  they  were  prefixed  was  the  time  when  the  temple 
services  were  first  systematically  arranged  after  the  return  from 
the  captivity,  or  later  than  the  time  of  Ezra.  This  inference 
will  be  confirmed  if  we  attend  to  those  psalms  to  which  is  prefixed 
the  title  "  A  psalm  of  Asaph."  There  are  twelve  of  these  : 
the  50th,  and  the  series  from  the  73rd  to  the  83rd  inclusive. 
Who  was  Asaph  ?  He  was,  according  to  the  first  book  of  Chronicles 
(xvi.  7),  David's  cliief  choirmaster.  Now  it  is  perfectly  impossible 
that  David's  chief  choirmaster  can  have  composed  Psalms  Ixxiv. 
Ixxix.  or  Ixxx. ;  or,  I  may  add.  Psalms  Ixxviii.  or  Ixxxiii.  How  then 
comes  it  that  they  were  attributed  to  Asaph  ?  For  a  very  obvious, 
though  a  very  bad,  reason  ;  because  it  was  thought  that,  next 
to  David  himself,  no  one  was  so  likely  to  compose  psalms  as 
those  who  had  been  appointed  by  David  to  minister  in  the  temple, 
and  especially  those  who  superintended  the  music  of  the  temple. 
Hence  certain  psalms  were  attributed  to  Asaph  ;  a  good  many 
also  to  the  sons  of  Korah,  also  known  from  the  Chronicles.  But 
the  books  of  Samuel  and  Kings,  as  they  know  nothing  of  Asaph, 
so  also  they  know  nothing  of  the  sons  of  Korah.  It  is  plain 
then  that  these  titles,  which  in  some  cases  are  impossible  beyond 
doubt,  were  prefixed  blindly  and  by  virtue  of  a  late  and  untrust- 
worthy tradition  ;  and  hence  the  titles  generally  have  no  authority. 
At  the  same  time,  this  consideration  proves  that  few  psalms, 
and  none  of  those  that  have  titles,  can  have  been  composed 
in  the  time  of  the  Maccabees  ;  for  the  temple  services  were 
certainly  arranged  long  before  tliis  time. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  HEAVENLY  IDEAL  TAKES  TO  ITSELF  EARTHLY  ARMOUR 

Before  coming  to  the  detailed  history  which  must  occupy 
the  present  chapter,  an  important  question  has  to  be  asked, 
the  answer  to  which  will  greatly  influence  our  thoughts  as  to 
the  whole  subject  of  which  the  present  work  is  the  exposition. 
Was  there  any  intrinsic  danger,  discernible  in  the  history  of 
Israel,  leading  to  that  moral  error  which  marred  the  noble  qualities 
of  the  Jewish  nation — their  narrowness  and  resolute,  deliberate 
separation  from  the  nations  round  them  ?  There  was  a  plain 
danger  in  their  exceedingly  literal  obedience  to  the  religion 
which  they  had  received ;  in  their  refusal  to  exercise  their  own 
judgment  as  to  the  intrinsic  merits  of  the  beliefs  which  they 
held,  of  the  commands  which  they  obeyed.  Only  in  one  respect 
do  we  read  of  their  using  a  personal  judgment  in  modification 
of  a  commandment  esteemed  by  them  as  divine  ;  and  that  was, 
that  in  war  time  they  determined  that  it  was  lawful  to  fight 
on  the  sabbath.  At  first  they  had  held  otherwise  ;  but  their 
sufferings  in  consequence  were  so  palpable  and  so  great  that 
they  changed  their  opinion  and  their  action.  The  very  interesting 
record  of  this  change  of  purpose  will  be  found  in  1  Maccabees 
ii.  29-41.  In  other  respects,  the  Jews  seem  to  have  held  literalness 
of  obedience  obligatory,  no  matter  what  the  circumstances 
might  be  ;  and  in  the  manner  in  which  they  interpreted  their 
law,  this  literalness  of  obedience  involved  an  extreme  degree 
of  separation  from  neighbouring  nations — far  more  than  had 
characterised  them  in  the  times  precedent  to  the  severe  reforms 
of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah. 

It  is  impossible  not  to  trace  a  connexion  between  this  rigidity 
of  practice,  and  the  belief  which  the  Jewish  nation  held  as  to 
the  literal  truth  of  those  miracles  which,  in  the  books  of  Exodus, 
Numbers,  and  Deuteronomy,  are  related  as  preceding  and  accom-. 
panying  the  giving  of  the  divine  law  to  Israel.     Throughout  the 

25—2 


388  THE    HEAVENLY    IDEAL  [ch. 

whole  story  of  the  deliverance  of  the  Israelites  from  their  Egyptian 
bondage,  as  that  is  told  in  the  Biblical  books  just  mentioned, 
the  action  and  the  commands  of  Jehovah  are  represented  as 
equally  clear  and  unmistakable  with  any  commands  which 
an  earthly  general  might  issue  to  his  followers,  or  any  action 
which  an  earthly  king  might  direct  against  enemies  or  rebels. 
If  there  is  mystery  in  the  Divine  Nature  when  regarded  in  itself, 
if  there  is  uncertainty  in  the  human  interpretation  of  the  Divine 
Will,  at  all  events  this  mystery,  this  uncertainty,  does  not  attach 
to  the  revelation  as  it  is  recorded  in  Exodus  and  Deuteronomy  ; 
and  the  penalties  threatened  in  case  of  disobedience  are  especially 
clear  and  terrible.  Can  we  wonder  that  religious  Jews,  believing 
in  the  entire  truth  of  the  books  of  Exodus  and  Deuteronomy, 
should  have  resigned  their  own  judgment  in  following  commands 
which  to  their  apprehension  were  so  clearly  sanctioned,  and  in 
themselves  so  unmistakable  ?  Can  we  wonder  that  they  should 
have  resolved  rather  to  go  beyond  than  to  fall  short  of  the 
obedience  which  seemed  to  be  required  of  them  ?  Yet  is  it 
not  plain  that  this  resignation  of  their  own  natural  judgment 
landed  them  in  those  very  faults  which  we  discern  so  plainly 
in  their  conduct  ?  The  prophets  would  have  guarded  them 
against  such  faults  ;  but  the  prophets  could  produce  no  miracles 
in  favour  of  a  broad  and  Uberal  temperament  equal  to  those 
which  the  law  appeared  to  record  as  inculcating  narrowness  ; 
and  therefore  narrowness  triumphed.  But  can  it  be  denied 
that  this  consideration  must  influence  us  against  the  literal 
truth  of  the  miracles  of  Exodus  and  of  Mount  Sinai  ?  "  By  their 
fruits  ye  shall  know  them." 

I  return  to  the  historical  sequence,  towards  the  end  of  the 
third  century  before  Christ. 

The  Jews  suffered  considerably  during  those  wars  between 
the  kings  of  Syria  and  the  kings  of  Egypt  which  took  place 
at  this  period  ;  and  some  of  them  became  weary  of  their  isolation 
and  severance  from  other  nations.  Practically  they  had  been 
transferred  to  the  Syrian  kingdom,  though  it  had  been  arranged 
by  treaty  that  they  should  be  replaced  under  the  dominion 
of  Egypt  ;  but  Antiochus  IV^,  who  mounted  the  Syrian  throne 
in  the  year  175  B.C.,  was  not  a  man  to  give  up  easily  what  he 
practically  possessed.  About  tliis  time  some  of  the  Jews  of 
Jerusalem  establislied  a  (ireck  gymnasium  in  their  city  ;  a  place 
of  exercise,  where  Jews,  following  the  Greek  example,  might 
run  races,  or  throw  the  quoit,  or  wrestle,  entirely  naked.     Such 


XV]         TAKES    TO    ITSELF    EARTHLY    ARMOUR         389 

a  custom  gave  great  offence  to  the  religious  Jews  ;  but  worse 
things  were  at  hand. 

In  the  year  171  B.C.,  Ptolemy  Philometor,  the  youthful 
king  of  Egypt,  determined  to  vindicate  his  treaty  rights  over 
Palestine,  and  sent  an  army  there  ;  but  Antiochus,  of  the  two, 
had  the  greater  miUtary  skill.  (He  was  called  Epiphanes — the 
"  Illustrious  " — by  his  flatterers  ;  and  the  title,  without  any 
special  reference  to  its  meaning,  has  stuck  to  him  ;  Antiochus 
Epiphanes  he  is  called.)  He  won  the  victory,  and  was  at  first 
disposed  to  treat  the  Egyptian  monarch  not  unfairly  ;  but  in 
the  year  168  B.C.,  under  circumstances  of  some  provocation, 
he  showed  a  disposition  to  effect  the  entire  conquest  of  Egypt. 
Then  the  great  power  of  Rome,  always  favourable  to  the  Ptolemies, 
intervened  in  their  favour.  The  deputy  PopiHus  met  Antiochus 
Epiphanes  near  Pelusium,  on  the  confines  of  Egypt ;  and  after 
some  parleying,  brought  the  question  at  issue  to  a  point  by  an 
act  which  the  historian  Polybius  tells  us  was  thought  overbearing 
(and  we  may  think  so  too).  With  the  stick  that  he  held  he  drew 
a  circle  in  the  sand  round  the  monarch,  and  demanded  that 
Antiochus,  before  he  stepped  outside  that  circle,  should  give  a 
plain  answer  to  the  question,  whether  he  did  or  did  not  intend 
to  conquer  Egypt  ?  Such  an  intention,  it  was  clearly  implied, 
would  be  equivalent  to  making  war  with  Rome.  Antiochus 
knew  the  power  of  Rome  ;  for  not  only  did  he  remember  how 
the  Romans  had  defeated  his  father  Antiochus  III,  but  he  himself 
had  lived  at  Rome,  as  a  hostage,  for  years  ;  and  he  submitted. 
Egypt  was  saved  ;    but  it  was  at  the  expense  of  Jerusalem. 

Already,  two  years  earlier  than  the  date  at  which  I  have 
now  arrived,  Antiochus  Epiphanes  had  visited  Jerusalem,  and 
had  plundered  it  of  all  the  gold  that  was  in  the  temple  and  in 
the  sanctuary,  as  the  first  book  of  Maccabees  tells  us.  Now, 
wounded  to  the  quick  by  the  contumely  with  which  the  Romans 
had  treated  him,  he  resolved  to  prove  himself  the  master  at  any 
rate  of  his  own  dominions  ;  and  he  issued  a  decree  commanding 
uniformity  of  religious  worship  in  the  lands  which  he  ruled. 
Such  a  decree  has  had  parallels  both  in  ancient  and  in  modern 
times  ;  king  Josiah,  for  instance,  had  made  a  similar  attempt 
in  his  own  small  kingdom  of  Judah.  Josiah  was  a  far  more 
religious  man  than  Antiochus  Epiphanes,  and  he  ruled  over 
a  people  naturally  more  united  in  rehgious  beUef  than  the  miscel- 
laneous Syrian  population  ;  yet  even  he  failed  to  produce  perma- 
nent uniformity  in  religion,  as  we  see  by  what  happened  in  the 


390  THE    HEAVENLY   IDEAL  [oh. 

reigns  of  the  succeeding  kings  of  Judah.  It  could  not  be  expected 
that  Antiochus  Epiphanes  should  succeed  ;  but  the  extent  and 
suddenness  of  his  failure  could  hardly  have  been  anticipated. 

He  sent  a  collector  of  tribute  with  an  armed  force  to  Jerusalem, 
who  occupied  the  city  at  first  peaceably  ;  but  who  presently 
revealed  his  true  character  as  a  bloody  persecutor.  Large  parts 
of  Jerusalem  were  burned  down,  men  were  killed,  women  and 
children  were  enslaved  ;  a  great  fortress  was  constructed,  and 
was  garrisoned  with  soldiers  taken  from  that  part  of  the  Jewish 
population  which  had  consented  to  adopt  Hellenic  customs 
both  in  ordinary  hfe  and  in  religious  worship  ;  heathen  worship 
was  established  in  the  temple  ;  the  possession  of  a  copy  of  the 
Pentateuchal  law  was  made  a  criminal  offence,  punishable  with 
death.  Commands  were  issued  that  through  all  Judaea  altars 
to  heathen  deities  should  be  erected. 

Such  is  the  account  given  in  the  first  book  of  Maccabees. 
The  second  book  of  Maccabees  renders  the  situation  more  compre- 
hensible, and  (it  must  be  added)  slightly  more  favourable  to 
Antiochus  Epiphanes  himself,  by  telling  us  of  the  disorders  that 
had  taken  place  within  Jerusalem  owing  to  the  action  of  those 
Jews  who  desired  to  embrace  Hellenic  customs  ;  disorders  which 
had  been  so  represented  to  Antiochus,  as  to  make  him  think  the 
whole  nation  in  revolt.  Revolt,  however,  there  had  so  far  been 
none  ;  though  the  internal  strife  within  Jerusalem,  between  the 
Jews  themselves,  had  been  lamentable.  The  one  bright  spot 
in  the  history,  before  the  rising  of  the  Maccabees,  had  been 
the  conduct  of  the  brave  and  faithful  high  priest  Onias,  who 
had  been  deposed  through  the  machinations  of  an  unworthy 
competitor,  and  who  was  afterwards  slain  at  Antioch  for  his 
protest  against  the  ill-dealings  of  another  false  high  priest  (not 
the  one  by  whom  he  himself  had  been  driven  out).  The  second 
book  of  Maccabees  also  tells  us  that  the  Samaritans  were  being 
persecuted,  and  speaks  of  the  temple  on  Mount  Gerizim  without 
enmity,  which  is  notable  ;  nor  does  the  second  book  of  Maccabees 
charge  the  Samaritans  with  recreancy,  as  Josephus  does.  We 
may  believe  that  there  were  recreant  Samaritans,  but  we  may 
also  believe  that  there  were  faithful  Samaritans.  However,  no 
doubt  the  Jews  were  the  braver  people. 

For  the  moment,  Jerusalem  was  Hellenised  ;  but  resistance 
to  Antiochus  broke  out  in  the  small  town  of  Modin,  in  the  north 
of  Judiea.  In  this  city  Mattathias  was  a  man  high  in  esteem, 
and   also   a   priest  ;     and   the   officers   of   king   Antiochus   were 


XV]         TAKES    TO    ITSELF   EARTHLY   ARMOUR         391 

exceedingly  anxious  that  he  should  set  the  example  to  his  fellow- 
citizens  of  obedience  to  the  king's  commands.  They  summoned 
him  therefore  and  other  elders  of  the  city  to  a  conference,  and 
the  altar  on  which  the  heathen  sacrifice  (probably  to  Zeus 
Hellenios)  was  to  be  performed  stood  close  at  hand.  He  was 
invited  to  offer  sacrifice  (by  burning  incense,  we  must  suppose) ; 
he  repHed  that,  though  all  the  nations  in  the  realms  of  king 
Antiochus  were  to  forsake  the  worship  of  their  fathers  and  to 
do  what  the  king  bade  them  do,  he  and  his  sons  and  his  brethren 
would  follow  the  law  which  they  had  received  from  their  fathers, 
and  would  not  obey  the  king.  Scarcely  had  he  spoken  when 
another  Jew  came  forward  and  offered  the  heathen  sacrifice 
prescribed.  Trembhng  with  indignation,  Mattathias  rushed 
forward,  and  killed  the  sacrificing  Jew  upon  the  altar ;  and  in 
this,  it  must  be  observed,  he  was  following  the  strict  command 
of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  (xiii,  6-9).  But  such  an  act  was 
a  declaration  of  war ;  and  having  done  it,  Mattathias  turned 
on  the  chief  officer  of  the  king,  and  slew  him  also.  Then,  we 
read,   he 

cried  out  in  the  city  with  a  loud  voice,  saying,  Whosoever  is  zealous 
for  the  law,  and  maintaineth  the  covenant,  let  him  come  after  me.  And 
he  and  his  sons  fled  into  the  mountains,  and  forsook  all  that  they  had 
in  the  city. 

In  such  a  way  did  the  great  and  patriotic  Maccabean  war 
begin  ;  and  surely,  if  we  are  to  sympathise  with  any  warriors, 
we  must  sympathise  with  Mattathias  and  his  sons.  It  is  true, 
that  there  is  a  spiritual  war,  which  is  greater  than  any  war  waged 
with  material  weapons  ;  a  war  in  which  the  sufferer  for  truth 
does  not  seek  to  inflict  injury  on  those  who  oppress  him  ;  a  war 
in  which  the  flame  of  love,  nourished  invisibly,  consumes  the 
evil  passions  that  oppose  themselves  to  it.  It  must  be  conceded 
that  Mattathias  had  not  framed,  even  in  his  imagination,  the 
thought  of  a  spiritual  war  of  this  kind.  But  even  if  it  had  been 
in  his  thoughts,  was  the  time  ripe  for  so  pure  an  agency  of  the 
spirit  ?  I  think  not ;  and  if  this  opinion  be  correct,  we  must 
give  to  the  act  of  Mattathias  our  full  approval.  I  do  not  indeed 
know  that  that  approval  has  ever  been  withheld  from  him, 
either  by  Christians,  or  by  lovers  of  hberty  in  any  age ;  but 
it  is  well  to  make  it  clear  that,  though  a  higher  form  of  action 
than  his  was  under  certain  conditions  conceivable  and  possible, 
those  conditions  did  not  exist  for  him,  and  he  was  bound  to  act 
as  he  did. 


392  THE    HEAVENT.Y    IDEAL  [CH. 

Of  all  wars  of  liberation,  hardly  any  is  so  wonderful  as  that 
which  ensued  after  this  beginning.  Mattathias  soon  died, 
overcome  by  age  and  hardships  ;  but  he  left  five  sons  behind  him, 
every  one  of  whom  was  inspired  by  the  ardent  resolve  either 
to  set  their  nation  free  or  to  die.  Of  these  five  sons,  Judas, 
sumamed  MaccabsDus,  has  won  by  far  the  greatest  fame,  and 
justly  ;  for  he  (the  third  in  order  of  age)  was  the  first  after  his 
father's  death  to  take  command  of  the  whole  band  of  insurgents, 
and  he  broke  the  forces  of  the  king  of  Syria  when  they  were 
strongest  and  most  united.  No  greater  proof  has  ever  been 
given  of  the  warlike  strength  which  religion  is  capable  of  inspiring  ; 
for  Judas  did  not  fear  to  attack  an  army  exceeding  his  own 
numbers  tenfold  ;  and  at  last,  in  a  lull  of  which  his  victories 
had  been  the  cause,  he  went  up  to  Jerusalem,  purified  the  temple, 
and  restored  the  ceremonies  and  sacrifices  ordained  by  the 
Pentateuchal  law.  This  was  three  years  after  its  desecration  by 
the  order  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes ;  but  the  real  end  of  the  war 
was  yet  far  distant.  There  were  still  many  Jews  who  adhered 
to  the  cause  of  the  oppressor,  and  who  desired  to  adopt  Greek 
customs,  perhaps  even  the  Greek  religion  ;  and  these  actually 
held  the  citadel  at  Jerusalem,  from  which  Judas  and  his  followers, 
though  masters  of  the  city,  were  unable  to  dislodge  them.  Yet 
the  victories  of  Judas  were  sufficient  to  strike  dismay  into  the 
heart  of  king  Antiochus ;  and  that  imperious  monarch  died 
(or  according  to  some  accounts  was  slain)  in  the  year  following 
the  restoration  of  the  temple  to  those  divine  uses  for  which  it 
was  lawfully  intended. 

I  must  not  follow  this  Maccabean  war  in  its  details.  The 
first  of  the  five  illustrious  brethren  to  die  was  Eleazar,  who  with 
his  sword  slew  the  elephant  on  which  he  believed  the  Syrian 
king  to  be  sitting  (this  Syrian  king  was  the  successor  of  Antiochus 
Epiphanes)  ;  the  elephant,  pierced  by  the  deadly  blow  from 
beneath,  fell  on  Eleazar  and  crushed  him.  Next  came  the  turn 
of  Judas  himself,  who  with  eight  hundred  men  attacked  an  army 
of  twentj'-two  thousand  ;  he  fell,  the  greatest  warrior  that  the 
race  of  Israel  had  produced  since  the  days  of  David  ;  perhaps 
a  greater  warrior  even  than  David.  He  was  succeeded  in  the 
leadership  by  Jonathan,  the  youngest  of  the  fiv^e  ;  the  eldest 
of  the  brothers,  John,  was  shortly  after  this  captured  and  slain. 
After  this  there  was  a  lull  in  the  fighting  ;  the  Jewish  patriots, 
outworn  by  their  efforts,  were  no  longer  able  to  gain  signal 
victories  ;    on   the  other  liand,   the  keen  desire  to  destroy  the 


XV]         TAKES    TO    ITSELF    EARTHLY    ARMOUR         393 

Jewish  religion  had  received  a  check  by  the  death  of  Antiochus 
Epiphanes,  and  the  temple  service  at  Jerusalem  went  on  un- 
hindered. The  principal  enemies  of  the  ministrations  at  the 
temple  were  now  the  recreant  Jews,  who  still  held  the  citadel 
at  Jerusalem  ;  for  they  knew  that  they  could  not  safely  surrender 
themselves  to  their  fellow-countrymen,  and  it  was  necessary 
for  them  therefore  to  hold  by  the  royal  government,  and  even 
to  accentuate  its  disposition  against  the  Jewish  patriots.  How- 
ever, the  kingdom  of  Syria  was  in  a  state  of  internal  dissension  ; 
and  Jonathan  was  powerful  enough  for  his  aUiance  to  be  sought 
eagerly  by  the  contending  parties.  Hence  the  Hellenising  Jews, 
though  desirous  of  obtaining  the  help  of  the  various  Greek 
governments,  never  succeeded  in  doing  so,  and  became  weaker 
continually.  In  the  end,  Jonathan  was  treacherously  slain ; 
but  the  last  of  the  five  brothers,  Simon,  was  not  wanting  to  the 
needs  of  his  people.  He,  the  second  of  the  five  in  age,  had  been 
designated  by  his  father  as  the  most  prudent  counsellor  among 
them  ;  and  he  was  eminently  fitted  to  complete  the  work  which 
his  brother  Judas  had  begun.  In  his  days,  we  read  in  the  first 
book  of  Maccabees  (xiii.  41),  "the  yoke  of  the  heathen  was 
taken  away  from  Israel  "  ;  the  Jews  became  free,  and  as  in  the 
ancient  times,  owed  allegiance  to  none  but  God.  The  Greek 
power  had  fallen  by  its  own  inherent  weakness  ;  and  the  favour 
of  the  Romans,  which  Judas  Maccabaeus  and  his  successors 
had  won,  contributed  to  this  happy  conclusion. 

Simon,  as  high  priest,  directed  the  affairs  of  his  fellow-country- 
men splendidly  and  honourably  ;  religious  dissension  had  ceased, 
not  without  the  use  of  force,  it  is  true  ;  but  henceforth  we  hear 
no  more  of  the  heathenising  tendency  which  had  so  largely 
contributed  to  encourage  the  tyrannous  designs  of  Antiochus 
Epiphanes.  Never  again  would  the  Jews  embrace  the  Greek 
religion  or  Greek  customs.  What  precisely  happened  to  the 
recreant  Jews,  when  they  were  compelled  to  submit  to  their 
fellow-countrymen,  we  are  not  told  ;  but  they  were  not  slain 
(1  Maccabees  xiii.  43-53). 

In  the  end  Simon  was  killed  by  a  wicked  son-in-law,  who 
hoped  to  obtain  the  government  for  himself  ;  but  his  son  John 
was  warned  in  time,  not  indeed  to  save  his  father,  but  to  prevent 
the  murderer  reaping  the  benefit  of  his  deed.  John  Hyrcanus 
he  was  called  ;  and  a  very  powerful  prince  he  proved  himself 
to  be.  Though  at  first  hard  pressed  by  Antiochus  Sidetes, 
king  of  Syria,  and  compelled  to  pay  tribute  to  him,  he  presently 


394  THE    HEAVENLY    IDEAL  [ch. 

took  advantage  of  the  Syrian  dissensions  to  obtain  entire  freedom. 
We  cannot  entirely  approve  of  his  subsequent  measures.  He 
conquered  Samaria  and  Iduma^a ;  razed  to  the  ground  the  city 
of  Samaria,  and  the  Samaritan  temple  on  Mount  Gerizim,  and 
compelled  all  the  Idumaeans  to  accept  the  rite  of  circumcision, 
which  that  nation  thenceforth  faithfully  practised,  becoming 
thereby  practically  one  nation  with  the  Jews.  There  was  no 
need  to  enforce  circumcision  on  the  Samaritans,  for  they  already 
practised  that  rite  ;  but  the  Samaritans,  when  they  regained 
some  power,  vindicated  their  separateness  from  the  Jews,  and 
refused  a  friendship  which  they  could  not  sincerely  feel.  While 
it  is  true  that  John  Hyrcanus  carried  the  Jewish  power  to  a  height 
greater  than  it  had  reached  since  the  days  of  Solomon,  we  must 
regard  him  as  reverting  to  an  earthly  ideal  as  the  goal  of  his 
fellow-countrymen,  and  as  forgetting  that  moderation  and 
tenderness  which  in  the  prophets  had  been  a  light  pointing  to 
a  heavenly  ideal  and  to  a  new  order  of  creative  power. 

Yet,  among  the  faithful  spirits  in  Israel,  the  thought  of  the 
heavenly  ideal  had  not  been  lost.  It  was  held,  indeed,  with  some 
confusion  of  thought,  as  was  natural  where  so  many  different 
and  warring  impulses  were  in  the  field  ;  but  it  claimed  for  itself 
a  true  place,  in  what  manner  I  must  now  show. 

The  glory  of  the  Maccabean  period  comes  to  an  end  with 
the  death  of  John  Hyrcanus,  about  the  end  of  the  second  century 
before  Christ.  From  the  very  beginning  of  the  struggle  against 
the  Syrian  kings,  the  darkness  of  the  post-captivity  period 
is  dispelled  ;  a  clearer  light  rests  on  the  affairs  of  the  Jewish 
nation  than,  perhaps,  at  any  previous  period  of  their  history; 
certainly  than  on  any  period  since  the  reign  of  David.  The 
great  men  who  set  the  Jewish  nation  free  and  saved  their 
religion  from  extermination,  the  family  of  which  Judas  Maccabaeus 
is  the  most  famous  figure,  are  worthy  of  being  set  beside  any  of 
the  great  men  of  action  who  had  illustrated  the  earlier  Israelite 
history— by  the  side  of  Moses  and  Joshua,  Samuel  and  David. 
Tolerance  was  not  their  virtue  (and  tlieir  predecessors  had  set 
them  no  example  of  tolerance)  ;  to  us  they  may  seem  cruel, 
but  not  wantonly  cruel ;  their  enemies  were  so  strong  that  the 
exercise  of  mercy  towards  them  would  entail  dangers  beyond 
the  ordinary.  Two  things  distinguish  the  rehgion  of  the  Macca- 
bean era  from  the  religion  of  ancient  days  ;  one,  the  constancy 
with  which  the  ceremonial  law  was  now  kept,  especially  as  regards 
the  sabbath  and  the  sabbatical  year  (the  history  is  full  of  instances 


XV]         TAKES    TO    ITSELF    EARTHLY   ARMOUR         395 

of  this) ;  the  other,  the  absence  of  recognised  prophecy.  The 
consciousness  of  Judas  Maccabseus  and  his  fellows  that  the 
prophetic  power  was  not  theirs  was  curiously  shown  when  they 
had  to  consider  what  to  do  with  the  altar  in  the  temple  which 
had  been  desecrated  by  heathen  sacrifices ;  they  dared  not  offer 
sacrifices  upon  it  any  longer,  but  neither  dared  they  offer  it  any 
reproach ;  so  they  laid  up  the  stones  of  it  "in  a  convenient 
place,  until  there  should  come  a  prophet  to  give  an  answer 
concerning  them."  It  never  occurred  to  these  brave  and  faithful 
Jews  that  the  reason  why  there  was  no  prophet  among  them 
was  that  they  had  elevated  the  book,  and  especially  the  book 
of  the  ceremonial  law,  into  too  high  a  place.  The  history  of  the 
Divine  deahngs  with  Israel,  the  practice  of  those  ordinances 
which  symbohsed  to  Israel  the  Divine  Presence,  were  so  much 
to  the  Jewish  nation  at  that  date,  that  they  had  lost  the  direct 
touch  with  God,  the  direct  inspiration  of  God. 

Yet,  after  all,  they  had  not  lost  it  entirely.  At  that  very 
hour,  when  the  Jews  looked  upon  prophecy  as  a  thing  of  the 
past,  prophecy  was  near  at  hand  again.  Not  the  direct  and 
simple  prophecy  that  there  had  been  of  old  ;  no  man  in  the  time 
of  the  Maccabees  dared  to  speak  to  his  fellows  plainly  in  the 
name  of  Jehovah,  the  Holy  One  of  Israel ;  but  the  prophetic 
instinct  was  there,  and  it  found  a  way  for  itself.  The  great 
courage  of  the  Maccabees  had  stirred  the  hearts  of  all  Jews, 
far  or  near ;  they  asked,  what  was  to  come  of  it  ?  And  the 
answer  was.  The  Kingdom  of  God.  Surely,  if  men  were  faithful 
to  God  (and  the  Jews  felt  that  some  among  them  had  been  faithful) 
God  would  bend  down  from  heaven  and  raise  up  his  faithful 
servants  to  share  in  his  kingdom  ! 

That  is  the  conviction  of  which  the  book  of  Daniel  is  the 
exponent.  It  is  a  conviction  also  which  breathes  lyrically  in 
the  149th  psalm,  which  I  cannot  but  think  Maccabean  ;  but 
in  the  book  of  Daniel  it  forms  part  of  a  carefully  thought  out 
view  of  history,  which  has  arrested  the  attention  of  many  genera- 
tions. I  am  assuming,  it  will  be  seen,  that  the  book  of  Daniel 
was  written,  in  the  main,  after  the  Maccabean  wars  ;  and  this 
implies  that  there  is  a  great  deal  in  it  which  pretends  to  be 
prophecy  and  to  have  been  written  in  ancient  times,  which 
really  was  past  history  at  the  time  when  the  book  was  written ; 
and  it  may  be  thought  that  a  pretence  of  this  kind  debars  the 
writer  from  any  claim  to  be  a  true  prophet.  That,  however, 
would  by  no  means  be  a  just  judgment.     The  Jews  of  the  period 


396  THE    HEAVENLY    IDEAL  [CH. 

after  the  captivity  lived  in  an  ideal  world,  and  fiction  came  very 
naturally  to  them  ;  the  more  naturally,  in  proportion  as  it 
ministered  to  their  ideal.  No  one  can  reasonably  doubt  that 
the  book  of  Judith  is  simple  fiction,  and  the  book  of  Tobit  also, 
and  the  history  of  Susanna,  and  of  Bel  and  the  Dragon  ;  nor 
can  I  much  doubt  that  the  famous  story  which  occupies  the  third 
and  fourth  chapters  of  the  1st  book  of  Esdras  is  fiction  also. 
Surely  too  the  story  of  Job  is  a  fable,  and  not  real  history  ; 
and  (as  I  said  in  the  preceding  chapter)  the  details,  though 
not  altogether  the  substance,  of  the  book  of  Esther  also.  Not 
one  of  these  books  was  written  ^vith  any  bad  conscience,  or  with 
any  thought  in  the  writer's  mind  that  he  was  deceiving  his 
readers  ;  the  careful  sifting  of  statements  into  historical  and 
unhistorical  had  not  yet  begun  among  the  Jews.  When  real 
interesting  facts  had  to  be  told,  a  Jewish  historian  could  tell 
them,  as  we  see  in  the  first  book  of  Maccabees  ;  but  the  tempera- 
ment of  the  Jews  was  none  the  less  deeply  imaginative,  and  their 
imagination  mingled  with  their  historical  knowledge  in  a  way 
often  remarkable  as  parable  or  as  philosophy,  even  where  they 
strayed  most  widely  from  literal  accuracy  of  fact. 

The  book  of  Daniel  is  an  instance  illustrative  of  these  remarks. 
In  the  narrative  portion  of  it  (as  distinguished  from  the  prophecies 
which  it  contains)  we  find  the  names  of  real  historical  characters — 
Nebuchadnezzar,  Belshazzar,  Darius,  Ahasuerus  (or  Xerxes), 
Cyrus.  But  Belshazzar  was  not  the  last  monarch  of  the  dynasty 
of  Nebuchadnezzar,  nor  indeed  was  he  of  the  dynasty  of  Nebuchad- 
nezzar at  all,  nor  was  he  the  monarch  under  whom  the  glory 
of  empire  passed  away  from  Babylon.  Darius  was  not  a  Mede, 
nor  did  he  precede  Cyrus,  nor  was  he  the  son  of  Ahasuerus  (i.e. 
Xerxes)  but  his  father.  These  serious  historical  errors  had  long 
been  more  or  less  suspected,  and  have  been  made  absolutely 
clear  since  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  have  been  interpreted. 
(See  Professor  Sayce's  work.  The  Higher  Criticism  and  the  Monu- 
ments, ch.  XI.) 

It  will  not  be  necessary  to  say  more  in  this  place  of  the  narra- 
tives contained  in  the  book  of  Daniel  ;  but  the  prophecies  in 
it  must  not  be  left  without  careful  examination.  It  is  desirable 
to  make  it  clear,  in  the  first  instance,  that  in  so  far  as  these 
prophecies  relate  to  definite  history,  they  bring  before  us  events 
which  happened  as  far  as  the  downfall  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes, 
but  not  any  event  later  than  that  occurrence. 

There   are   five   prophetical   visions   in   the   book   of   Daniel. 


XV]         TAKES    TO    ITSELF    EARTHLY    ARMOUR         397 

The  first  of  them,  which  is  related  in  the  second  chapter,  is 
represented  as  a  dream  dreamed  by  king  Nebuchadnezzar  himself, 
but  by  him  forgotten  ;  and  the  demand  which  he  makes  of  his 
wise  men  is  that  they  shall  first  recall  the  dream  to  his  mind 
and  then  interpret  it.  The  wise  men  fail ;  but  the  youthful 
Jewish  captive  Daniel  succeeds.  What  the  king  had  dreamed 
was  this  :    he  had  seen  a  great  image,  whose 

head  was  of  fine  gold,  his  breast  and  his  arms  of  silver,  his  belly  and  his 
thighs  of  brass,  his  legs  of  iron,  his  feet  part  of  iron  and  part  of  clay. 

Upon  this  image  fell  a  great  stone  and  swept  the  image  away  ; 
and  the  stone  became  a  mountain  and  filled  the  whole  earth. 
To  the  dream  the  explanation  is  added.  The  four  principal 
parts  of  the  image  are  declared  to  be  four  great  kingdoms,  of 
which  the  first  (the  "  head  of  gold  ")  is  the  kingdom  set  up  by 
Nebuchadnezzar  himself,  the  others  are  to  follow  in  due  sequence. 
But  the  stone  is  a  heavenly  kingdom  which  shall  bring  all  these 
earthly  kingdoms  to  nought,  and  shall  last  for  ever. 

It  has  always  been  felt  by  everyone  who  looks  on  the  course 
of  history  with  natural  eyes,  that  these  four  kingdoms  are  the 
successive  empires  of  Babylon,  Persia,  Greece,  and  Rome.  But 
it  has  not  generally  been  recognised  that  the  empire  of  Rome, 
as  described  in  this  vision,  is  something  very  different  from  the 
empire  of  Rome  as  melded  by  Augustus  or  by  Tiberius.  Here 
is  the  detailed  description  of  it  : 

The  f oxirth  kingdom  shall  be  strong  as  iron :  forasmuch  as  iron  breaketh 
in  pieces  and  subdueth  all  things:  and  as  iron  that  crusheth  all  these, 
shall  it  break  in  pieces  and  crush.  And  whereas  thou  sawest  the  feet 
and  toes,  part  of  potters'  clay  and  part  of  iron,  it  shall  be  a  divided 
kingdom  ;  but  there  shall  be  in  it  of  the  strength  of  the  iron,  forasmuch 
as  thou  sawest  the  iron  mixed  with  pottery.  And  as  the  toes  of  the  feet 
were  part  of  iron  and  part  of  potterj',  so  the  kingdom  shall  be  partly 
strong  and  partly  brittle.  And  whereas  thou  sawest  the  iron  mixed 
with  pottery,  they  shall  mingle  themselves  with  the  seed  of  men  ;  but 
they  shall  not  cleave  one  to  another,  even  as  iron  doth  not  mingle  with 
pottery.     Daniel  ii.  40-43. 

That  is  not  a  description  of  the  Roman  empire  in  its  perfected 
form  ;  but  it  is  a  description  of  it  as  it  would  present  itself  to 
the  eyes  of  a  Jew  living  about  the  year  170  B.C.  Rome  was  then 
the  centre  of  the  world's  power,  and  Rome  was  strong  as  iron. 
But  the  fragments  of  the  Greek  empire  of  Alexander,  though 
submissive  to  Rome,  were  yet  separate  from  Rome ;  it  was 
a  "  divided  "  kingdom.     Nor  can  it  be  denied  that  Egypt,  Syria; 


398  THE    HEAVENLY   IDEAL  [ch. 

and  Greece  were  "  brittle  "  in  the  days  of  which  I  am  speak- 
ing; they  were  truly,  in  their  relation  to  Rome,  as  pottery 
to  iron. 

But  Antiochus  Epiphanes  is  not  mentioned  in  this  first 
vision,  which  possibly  was  written  before  he  became  so  distinctly 
the  enemy  of  the  Jews  as  he  was  afterwards.  In  the  second 
vision,  which  occupies  the  seventh  chapter,  reference  is  made 
to  him.  Here  again  the  basis  of  the  vision  lies  in  the  four  great 
kingdoms  ;  they  are  figured  here  as  four  beasts  ;  and  it  is  plain 
that  the  prophet  is  much  more  impressed  with  the  terribleness 
and  fierceness  of  the  fourth  kingdom  than  he  had  been  at  the 
time  of  the  first  vision.     Here  are  his  words  : 

After  this  I  saw  in  the  night  visions,  and  behold  a  fovirth  beast, 
terrible  and  powerful,  and  strong  exceedingly  ;  and  it  had  great  iron 
teeth:  it  devoured  and  brake  in  pieces,  and  stamped  the  residue  with 
his  feet  ;  and  it  was  diverse  from  all  the  beasts  that  were  before  it ;  and 
it  had  ten  horns.  I  considered  the  horns,  and  behold,  there  came  up 
among  them  another  horn,  a  little  one,  before  which  three  of  the  first 
horns  were  plucked  up  by  the  roots  ;  and  behold,  in  this  horn  were  eyes 
like  the  eyes  of  a  man,  and  a  mouth  speaking  great  things.     Daniel  vii.  7,  8. 

Presently,  in  the  explanation  of  the  vision,  we  are  told  that 
the  ten  horns  are  ten  kings,  who  shall  arise  out  of  the  fourth 
kingdom  ;  and  the  "  little  horn  "  is  another  king,  who  shall 
put  down  three  kings.  Whether  we  can  identify  all  the  ten 
kings,  subordinate  to  the  Roman  republic,  who  are  intended 
in  this  passage,  is  not  of  great  importance  ;  but  in  identifying 
the  "  Uttle  horn  "  with  Antiochus  Epiphanes,  we  have  to  remember 
first,  that  he  was  not  unsuccessful  as  a  warrior ;  and  next,  what 
better  description  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes  could  be  given  than 
the  following  words  : 

He  shall  speak  words  against  the  Most  High,  and  shall  wear  out  the 
saints  of  the  Most  High :  and  he  shall  think  to  change  the  times  and 
the  law  ;  and  they  shall  be  given  into  liis  hand  until  a  time  and  times 
and  half  a  time.  But  the  judgment  shall  sit,  and  they  shall  take  away 
liis  dominion,  to  consume  and  to  destroy  it  unto  the  end.     Ibid.  vii.  25,  20. 

That  is  the  real  conclusion  of  the  vision  in  the  seventh  chapter, 
as  far  as  the  four  kingdoms  are  concerned.  The  fourth  kingdom 
is  no  longer,  as  in  the  second  chapter,  surveyed  calmly  and  from 
a  distance  ;  it  is  looked  on  as  a  real  and  fierce  opponent ;  and 
the  reason  why  it  is  so  looked  on  lies  in  the  "  little  horn."  Rome 
has  to  answer  for  the  sins  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes  ;    the  two 


XV]         TAKES    TO    ITSELF    EARTHLY    ARMOUR         399 

are  regarded  as  belonging  to  one  order,  and  as  amenable  to  the 
same  judgment.  That  is  the  plain  sense  of  the  passage  ;  and 
if  it  is  not  absolutely  just,  we  must  not  look  for  abstract  justice 
from  a  writer  who  had  just  seen  all  which  he  held  most  dear 
and  sacred  at  the  point  of  destruction  through  the  powers  of 
the  world  as  they  then  were.  In  the  seventh  chapter,  as  in  the 
second,  the  scene  ends  with  the  victory  of  the  saints,  with  the 
establishment  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  Memorable,  in  view  of 
their  effect  on  subsequent  history,  were  the  following  words, 
which  occur  at  the  end  of  the  vision  itseK  (the  conception  is 
slightly  modified  in  the  subsequent  explanation)  : 

I  saw  in  the  night  visions,  and  behold,  there  came  with  the  clouds 
of  heaven  one  like  unto  a  son  of  man,  and  he  came  even  to  the  ancient 
of  days,  and  they  brought  him  near  before  him.  And  there  was  given 
him  dominion,  and  glory,  and  a  kingdom,  that  all  the  peoples,  nations, 
and  languages  should  serve  him  :  his  dominion  is  an  everlasting  dominion, 
which  shall  not  pass  away,  and  his  kingdom  that  which  shall  not  be 
destroyed.     Ibid.  vii.  13,  14. 

There,  indeed,  we  have  prophecy,  and  not  history  !  History 
and  prophecy  are  fused  together  in  the  mind  of  the  writer,  and 
we  may  truly  account  him  a  prophet,  because  he  valued  the 
history  only  as  ministrant  to  true  and  genuine  prophecy.  How 
greatly  the  conceptions  and  the  actions  of  Jesus  Christ  were 
influenced  by  the  passage  that  I  have  just  quoted,  no  student 
of  the  Gospels  can  be  ignorant. 

Nevertheless,  though  the  spirit  of  the  book  of  Daniel,  the 
ideal  end  foreseen  in  it,  is  genuine  prophecy,  the  historical  details 
in  it  which  wear  a  prophetic  guise  are  not  genuine  prophecy, 
but  are  history  known  to  the  writer.  The  main  proof  of  this 
lies  in  the  fact  that  the  detailed  prophecy  (or  what  appears  like 
prophecy)  reaches  as  far  as  Antiochus  Epiphanes,  and  no  further. 
In  the  first  vision  indeed  that  monarch  is  absent,  though  the 
confused  state  of  the  world  when  he  began  to  reign  is  vividly 
depicted ;  but  in  aU  the  other  visions  Antiochus  Epiphanes  himself 
occurs,  and  is  the  closing  figure  (as  far  as  the  kingdoms  of 
this  world  are  concerned).  Few  can  doubt  this  as  regards  the 
vision  of  the  seventh  chapter;  and  as  regards  the  vision  of  the 
eighth  chapter,  it  is  both  clear  in  itself,  and  I  believe  undoubted. 
In  both  the  seventh  and  eighth  chapters  the  prophetic  vision 
leads  up  to  the  disclosure  of  a  "  little  horn,"  which  "  made  war 
against  the  saints,  and  prevailed  against  them"  (chapter  vii.); 
which  "  shall  destroy  the  mighty  ones  and  the  holy  people,"  to 
use  the  tantamount  words  of  the  eighth  chapter  :  and  that  which  - 


400  THE    HEAVENLY    IDEAL  [ch. 

absolutely  fixes  the  little  horn  of  the  eighth  chapter  as  Antiochus 
Epiphanes  is  the  fact  that  he  is  distinctly  represented  as  coming 
out  of  one  of  the  four  Greek  kingdoms  ;  and  also  his  taking  away 
of  the  daily  sacrifice  in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  is  mentioned 
(viii.  1 1-14).  In  both  the  seventh  and  eighth  chapters  the  "  little 
horn  "  is  destroyed  ("  broken  without  hand "  is  the  phrase  in 
the  eighth  chapter) ;  and  it  is  hardly  possible  not  to  identify 
these  two  destructive  operations;  hence  the  two  foes  upon  whom 
they  are  carried  out  must  be  the  same  individual. 

Certain  dififerences  between  the  two  earlier  visions  and 
the  three  later  visions  in  the  book  of  Daniel  may  now  be  mentioned. 
The  chapters  in  which  the  two  earlier  visions  are  contained 
(those  in  the  second  and  seventh  chapters)  are  in  the  Aramaic 
language ;  the  chapters  in  which  the  three  later  visions  are 
contained  (those  in  the  eighth,  ninth,  and  eleventh  chapters) 
are  in  Hebrew.  Yet,  if  we  were  on  this  ground  to  suspect  a 
difference  of  authorship,  the  similarity  of  style  would  take  away 
the  suspicion  ;  and  no  doubt  Hebrew  and  Aramaic  were  equally 
familiar  to  the  writer.  Still,  a  certain  interval  is  suggested, 
and  is  probable,  between  the  two  earlier  and  the  three  later 
visions,  as  to  date  of  composition  ;  and  we  notice  that  whereas 
in  the  two  earlier  visions  four  world-empires  are  brought  on  the 
scene,  in  the  three  later  visions  only  two  of  these  empires  enter 
in  ;  and  a  careful  examination  shows  that  in  each  case  these 
two  empires  are  the  Persian  empire  and  the  Greek  empire.  This 
is  obvious  in  the  vision  of  the  eighth  chapter,  and  is  disputed 
by  nobody  ;  nor  does  any  one  deny  that  the  vision  of  the  eighth 
chapter  ends  with  Antiochus  Epiphanes.  No  one  ought  to  doubt 
the  same  with  regard  to  the  vision  of  the  eleventh  chapter  ; 
the  Persian  empire  is  mentioned  in  the  second  verse,  Alexander 
of  Macedon  and  his  successors  in  the  third  and  following  verses, 
and  Antiochus  Epiphanes  enters  in  at  the  21st  verse.  His 
career  is  very  much  enlarged  upon,  and  there  appears  to  be 
some  repetition,  and  perhaps  a  few  inaccuracies.  But  it  is 
plainly  Antiochus  Epiphanes  who  is  meant  all  through.  Nor 
is  the  case  different  with  the  vision  in  the  ninth  chapter  ;  though 
it  is  true  that  the  traditional  interpretation  of  this  passage  is 
one  that  makes  it  appear  to  prophesy  the  death  of  Jesus  Christ 
and  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  by  the  arms  of  the  Roman 
emperor  Titus.  So,  for  instance,  Tertullian  explains  it  {odversus 
Judceos,  c.  VIII.);  and  our  Authorised  Version,  by  one  very  curious 
and    acknowledged    mistranslation,    and    by    other   translations 


XV]         TAKES    TO    ITSELF    EARTHLY    ARMOUR         401 

which  are  technically  possible  but  really  wrong i,  supports  this 
ancient  interpretation.  But  it  is  an  interpretation  that  will 
not  stand ;  and  our  Revised  Version  has  done  much  to  correct 
the  error.  Antiochus  Epiphanes  it  is  who  closes  this  prophecy, 
just  as  he  closes  the  prophecy  in  the  visions  of  the  seventh, 
eighth,  and  eleventh  chapters.  The  words  which  make  this 
clear  are  the  following  : 

And  he  shall  make  a  firm  covenant  with  many  for  one  week :  and 
for  the  half  of  the  week  he  shall  cause  the  sacrifice  and  the  oblation  to 
cease ;  and  upon  the  wing  of  abominations  shall  come  one  that  maketh 
desolate  ;  and  even  unto  the  consummation,  and  that  determined,  shall 
wrath  be  poured  out  upon  the  desolator.     Daniel  ix.  27. 

These  are  the  concluding  words  of  the  prophecy ;  and  the 
"  covenant  "  referred  to  is  the  covenant  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes 
with  the  recreant  Jews  who  kept  the  citadel  at  Jerusalem  (the 
reckoning  of  a  week,  i.e.  seven  years,  may  be  up  to  the  death 
of  Antiochus) ;  the  "  half  of  the  week  "  consists  of  the  three  years 
during  which  sacrifices  according  to  the  Jewish  law  were  abolished 
in  the  temple ;  the  words  "  upon  the  wing  of  abominations 
shall  come  one  that  maketh  desolate  "  remind  us  of  the  "  abomina- 
tion of  desolation  "  in  1  Maccabees  i.  54,  which  means  the  offering 
of  heathen  sacrifice  upon  the  altar  in  the  temple  ;  and  the  "  wrath 
poured  out  upon  the  desolator  "  refers  to  the  defeat  and  death 
of  Antiochus  in  the  east.  Thus,  as  far  as  worldly  events  are 
concerned,  Antiochus  Epiphanes  closes  the  prophecy  in  the 
ninth  chapter  of  Daniel,  as  he  does  the  prophecies  in  the  seventh, 
eighth,  and  eleventh  chapters.  But  the  true  prediction  of  the 
book  of  Daniel,  the  prediction  which  gives  the  book  its  value, 
is  the  prophecy  of  the  fifth  kingdom,  the  kingdom  of  God  ;  and 
this  extends  of  course  into  illimitable  time. 

It  may  be  safely  assumed  that  if  the  prophecies  of  actual 
human  history  in  the  book  of  Daniel  end  with  Antiochus  Epiphanes 
(who,   in    his   relation    to   the   whole    of   history,    was   but    an 

^  The  acknowledged  mistranslation  lies  in  the  words,  "  Messiah  shall  be  cut  off, 
but  not  for  himself"  ;  words  which  bring  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  atonement 
straight  to  the  front.  The  right  translation  is,  "  Messiah  shall  be  cut  off,  and  shall 
have  nothing  "  ;  except  that  the  very  word  "  Messiah  "  suggests  implications  beyond 
the  real  meaning.  "  The  anointed  one  "  would  naturally  mean  the  high  priest ; 
but  possibly  the  real  meaning  is,  as  the  Septuagint  would  suggest,  "  the  anointing  "  ; 
that  is,  the  divine  guidance  of  which  the  anointing  is  the  symbol.  Then,  it  is  hardly 
to  be  doubted  that  "  the  anointed  one  "  is  to  appear  after  seven  weeks ;  not  after 
sixty-nine  weeks,  as  the  Authorised  Version  says.  Again  "to  anoint  the  most  Holy  " 
(Authorised  Version)  suggests  the  anointing  of  a  person  ;  whereas  the  Hebrew  means 
■'  to  anoint  holy  of  holies  "  ;  and  "  holy  of  holies  "  (as  Dr  Driver  has  remarked) 
is  the  phrase  which  in  Exodus  is  used  to  indicate  the  altar  of  burnt  offering  ;  which 
no  doubt  is  meant  here.  Finally,  the  last  word  of  the  chapter,  "  desolate  "  in  the 
Authorised  Version,  ought  no  doubt  to  be,  as  in  the  Revised  Version,  "  desolator." 

M.D.A.  26 


402  THE    HEAVENLY   IDEAL  [ch. 

insignificant  character),  this  is  because  history  was  known  to  the 
writer  just  as  far  as  the  era  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes  ;  or  in  other 
words  there  is  no  true  prophecy  here.  We  should  censure  severely 
a  writer  of  the  present  day  who  followed  such  a  practice ;  but 
in  a  Jew  of  the  second  century  before  Christ,  with  his  strong 
capacity  for  visions,  it  ought  not  greatly  to  scandalise  us.  More- 
over, the  writer  has  something  to  say  which  will  really  instruct 
us,  even  in  the  parts  where  we  may  most  criticise  him.  There 
is  a  truth  and  a  comprehensiveness  in  his  survey  of  history, 
and  in  his  vision  of  the  future,  which  remains  valid,  whatever 
be  the  weaknesses  in  his  method  of  imparting  his  knowledge, 
and  however  much  his  forecast  of  the  future  may  need  modifica- 
tion in  the  light  of  later  knowledge. 

Who  can  forget  his  delineation  of  the  four  great  world- 
empires,  which  one  after  another  sought  to  dominate  mankind  ? 
How  seldom  has  the  kernel  of  history  been  disclosed  with  such 
conciseness  and  intelligibility ;  and  though  he  does  not  do 
justice  to  the  inner  worth  of  these  powers,  and  especially  not 
to  Greece  and  Rome,  he  is  right  in  regarding  them,  in  their  actual 
form,  as  earthly  and  not  heavenly  ;  he  is  right  in  contrasting 
them  with  that  pure  and  heavenly  state  which  God  will  create 
and  which  will  never  pass  away.  I  have  already  quoted  part 
of  the  grand  description  of  this  in  the  seventh  chapter.  The 
last  of  the  five  visions  is,  as  far  as  the  eleventh  chapter  goes, 
prosaic  ;  but  it  is  continued  into  the  twelfth  chapter,  where 
the  description  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  though  not  under  that 
name,  is  resumed,  and  in  memorable  sentences  : 

Many  of  them  that  sleep  in  the  dust  of  the  earth  shall  awake,  some 
to  everlasting  life,  and  some  to  shame  and  everlasting  contempt.  And 
they  that  be  wise  shall  shine  as  the  brightness  of  the  firmament ;  and 
they  that  turn  many  to  righteousness  as  the  stars  for  ever  and  ever.  And 
thou,  O  Daniel,  shut  up  the  words,  and  seal  the  book,  even  to  the  time 
of  the  end :  many  shall  run  to  and  fro,  and  knowledge  shall  be  increased. 
Daniel  xii.  2-4. 

If  that  is  not  quite  the  final  word  either  as  regards  the  prospects 
of  mankind  in  this  visible  scene,  or  as  regards  the  future  existence 
which  is  to  come  to  each  one  of  us  after  death,  it  is  yet  a  word 
deserving  to  be  honoured  by  us,  and  borne  in  mind  for  our 
instruction  and  our  warning. 

Thus  then  from  tiie  Jews  came  the  clear  anticipation  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  eternal  life.  It  came  to  them  by  virtue 
of  their  valour,  their  fidelity  ;    it  was  the  reward  which  they 


XV]         TAKES    TO    ITSELF    EARTHLY    ARMOUR         403 

had  earned  and  received  from  God.  Their  valour  is  symbolised 
in  the  picturesque  miracles  of  the  book  of  Daniel ;  Shadrach, 
Meshach,  and  Abednego  in  the  burning  furnace,  Daniel  in  the 
den  of  hons,  are  representatives)  not  literally  true  but  in  many 
respects  true  in  the  spirit,  of  a  heroism  and  a  fideUty  abimdantly 
exemplified  in  the  Maccabean  wars. 

We  may  perhaps  regret  that  the  writer  of  the  book  of  Daniel 
had  no  specific  advice  to  offer  to  his  fellow-countrymen,  as  to 
their  duty  in  the  hour  of  victory.  Their  victory  over  the  Syrian 
king  was  great ;  but  what  were  to  be  their  principles  of  action 
afterwards  ? 

Here,  indeed,  we  come  to  the  weak  side  of  the  Jewish  nation, 
in  the  period  after  the  Maccabean  wars.  They  stood  expectant ; 
they  had  no  definite  principle  of  action,  to  guide  them  towards 
the  future.  Their  notion  of  duty  lay  in  obedience  to  the  law ; 
they  did  not  listen  to  the  springs  of  natural  action  within  their 
own  spirit.  Hence  formahsm  grew  upon  them  ;  and  in  formahsm 
lay  no  rational  ground  of  hopefulness  for  the  future.  John 
Hyrcanus,  successful  as  he  was  in  a  military  sense,  had  no  origina- 
tive power  as  a  statesman.  He  died  at  the  very  close  of  the 
second  century  before  Christ.  Then  slowly,  but  surely  and 
inevitably,  did  the  splendour  of  the  Maccabean  times  vanish. 
While  the  rulers  of  the  Maccabean  family  (the  Asmoneans,  as 
they  were  called)  fell  into  disrepute  and  passed  away,  while 
the  Idumsean  Herod  (circumcised,  and  yet  an  alien)  mounted 
to  the  throne  of  Judaea  and  astonished  the  world  by  his  wild 
passions  and  his  savage  ability,  the  Romans  were  becoming 
conspicuous  as  the  supreme  masters  (in  so  far  as  military  supre- 
macy constitutes  mastery)  of  the  whole  world  that  lay  within 
the  familiar  knowledge  of  the  Mediterranean  nations.  No  longer 
was  any  part  of  that  imperial  rule  of  the  texture  of  brittle  pottery  ; 
it  was  iron  through  and  through.  Pompey  had  entered  into 
the  holy  of  hohes  in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  ;  he  had  harmed 
it  not,  it  is  true  ;  he  had  wondered  at  the  absence  of  any  image 
of  the  Deity  ;  but  his  presence  there  had  been  the  presence 
of  a  conqueror.  What  were  the  Jews  to  think  ?  It  was  impos- 
sible for  them  to  acknowledge  the  Roman  power  as  divine ; 
and  yet  why  did  God,  the  true  God,  delay  the  manifestation 
of  himself  ?  Alone,  among  all  the  nations  beneath  the  sway 
of  Rome,  did  the  Jews  stand  haughty  and  unbending  before  their 
conquerors.  An  inward  fire  possessed  their  spirits  ;  they  dared 
not  disbeheve  God,  or  think  that  his  promises  to  them  would 


404  THE    HEAVENLY   IDEAL  [oh. 

fail ;  and  yet  how  was  God  about  to  vindicate  himself  ?  That 
was  the  pressing  question  which,  while  it  was  unsolved,  seemed 
to  crush  the  life  out  of  their  hearts.  They  searched  and  they 
searched,  and  truly  we  must  pity  them  ;  but  to  pity  themselves 
they  had  no  leisure.  They  were  as  men  in  a  dark  cave,  imprisoned 
away  from  the  light  of  heaven,  and  yet  knowing  that  that  light 
was  not  far  away :  but  were  they  to  wait  in  patience  till  it  should 
stand  self-revealed  ?  or  were  they  to  bestir  themselves  in  action, 
trusting  to  find  it  ?  The  hopes  of  the  nation  had  long  shaped 
themselves  into  the  forecast  of  a  Messiah,  an  anointed  Divine 
King  who  should  be ;  but  of  the  character  of  that  Messiah  they 
could  foresee  but  little. 

The  hterature  of  the  Jewish  people,  after  the  Maccabean  wars, 
bears  witness  to  the  spirit  that  I  have  just  been  describing;  a 
spirit  in  which  intense  devotion  to  tradition  was  combined  with 
an  ideaUstic  view  of  the  future,  and  especially  of  the  destiny  and 
office  of  Israel  in  the  years  to  come.  The  literature  to  which  I  am 
referring  is  in  the  main  what  is  called  apocalyptic,  and  it  bears 
the  style  and  impress  of  the  book  of  Daniel,  of  which  I  have 
already  given  an  account ;  but  there  are  some  remarkable  excep- 
tions to  this  statement  to  which  I  must  begin  by  referring  more 
particularly. 

These  exceptions  are  the  books  of  the  Maccabees.  The  first 
book  of  the  Maccabees  is  characterised  by  the  real  historical 
temper  beyond  any  other  Uterary  production  of  the  ancient 
Israelites.  The  author  of  it  seems  to  have  felt  that  the  exploits 
which  he  was  recording  were  sufficiently  memorable  to  attract 
and  retain  the  attention  of  his  reader  without  adventitious 
ornament  and  without  any  undue  boasting;  and  we  cannot  be 
too  grateful  to  him  for  his  modesty  and  his  reserve.  The  second 
book  of  the  Maccabees  has  something  of  the  same  characteristics 
as  the  first  book,  though  not  quite  free  from  marvels ;  the  famous 
though  dreadful  story,  in  the  sixth  and  seventh  chapters,  of  the 
martyrdoms  of  the  Jews,  excites  our  respect  and  sympathy. 
The  third  and  fourth  books  are  of  unequal  value  to  the  other 
two,  but  yet  have  history  as  their  basis. 

The  books  of  the  Maccabees  stand  alone,  however,  and  the 
main  bulk  of  this  literature  is,  as  I  have  said,  apocalyptic.  The 
works  which  compose  it  will  be  found  lucidly  translated  and 
explained  in  the  second  of  the  two  learned  and  ample  volumes 
entitled  Apocrypha  and  Pseudepigrapha  of  the  Old  Testament, 
edited  by   Dr  Charles.     Now  by  apocalyptic  literature  is  to  be 


XV]         TAKES    TO    ITSELF   EARTHLY   ARMOUR         405 

understood  literature  which  is  prophetic  indeed,  but  not  exhorta- 
tive in  that  plain  direct  manner  in  which  Hosea  and  Isaiah  are 
exhortative;  prophetic  of  the  distant  future  in  a  special  way. 
It  is  true  that  in  the  book  of  the  Revelation  in  the  New  Testament, 
in  the  second  and  third  chapters,  there  is  some  exhortation ;  and 
exhortation  is  not  entirely  absent,  though  veiled,  in  the  Testa- 
ments of  the  Twelve  Patriarchs,  a  Jewish  work  written  towards 
the  close  of  the  second  century  before  Christ ;  but  on  the  whole 
consolation  and  exaltation  of  the  spirit,  rather  than  reproof  or 
even  instruction,  is  the  object  of  both  these  works.  Much  more 
is  this  the  case  with  the  book  of  Enoch,  the  most  singular  and 
elaborate,  though  far  from  the  worthiest,  of  all  Jewish  books 
written  between  the  time  of  the  Maccabean  wars  and  the  Christian 
era. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  book  of  the  Revelation  in  the  New 
Testament  as  parallel  to  the  Jewish  apocalyptic  works  written 
before  the  Christian  era;  but  the  decisive  difference  between  it 
and  them  must  also  be  mentioned.  Whoever  was  the  author 
of  the  book  of  the  Revelation  (a  question  on  which  it  would  be 
premature  for  me  to  enter  in  this  place),  he  was  at  all  events  a 
writer  who  did  not  fear  to  speak  in  his  own  person,  and  who 
claimed  to  be  himself  inspired.  Now  it  is  the  invariable  practice 
of  the  Jewish  apocalyptic  writers  to  attribute  their  writings  to 
some  ancient  patriarch  :  Enoch,  or  the  sons  of  Jacob,  for  instance ; 
I  need  not  go  through  all  the  names.  It  will  be  evident  what 
a  want  of  directness  must  pervade  a  literature  composed  after 
this  pattern.  A  Jew  of  the  first  century  before  Christ,  who  sup- 
posed himself  to  be  reading  the  words  of  the  patriarch  Issachar, 
might  find  many  sound  moral  maxims  expressed  therein ;  but  he 
would  seldom  find  anything  precisely  suited  to  the  circumstances 
in  which  he  himself  stood,  so  many  centuries  later.  Now  it  is 
true,  as  Dr  Charles  has  done  well  to  point  out,  that  the  Testa- 
ments of  the  Twelve  Patriarchs  do  inculcate  a  very  pure  personal 
morality,  and  in  some  degree  anticipate  very  distinctive  features 
of  New  Testament  morahty.  But  this  is  not  the  same  thing  as 
saying  that  the  writer,  or  writers,  of  this  work  penetrated  to  the 
real  needs  of  their  own  generation,  or  of  the  nation  to  which  they 
belonged.  What  really  stood  in  the  way  of  the  Jews  becoming 
the  instructors  and  honoured  masters  of  all  the  nations  of  the 
world,  which  in  many  respects  they  deserved  to  be,  was  that 
rigid  ceremonial  with  which  they  were  bound,  which  they  could 
not  help  conserving  absolutely  even  where  the  counsels  of  love 


406  THE  HEAVENLY  IDEAL  [ch. 

and  fellow  feeling  would  have  impelled  them  to  break  it.  This 
was  the  weakness  of  Judaism  at  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing ; 
and  to  break  through  their  bondage,  something  much  stronger 
was  needed  than  any  teacher  of  Israel  provided  during  the  two 
centuries  before  the  Christian  era.  This  is  perhaps  enough  to 
say  concerning  the  merits  and  the  defects  of  Jewish  literature 
during  this  period. 

The  sects  into  which  the  Jewish  people  were  at  this  time 
divided  are  famous  and  notable ;  a  very  brief  characterisation 
of  them  is  all  that  can  be  attempted  here.  The  same  problem 
was  before  all ;  but  they  dealt  with  it  in  very  different  ways. 
The  Sadducees,  distinguished  rather  by  station  and  power  than 
by  number,  held  the  great  official  positions;  cool-headed,  not 
fanatical,  but  severe  as  judges ;  holding  by  the  Pentateuch 
as  clear  definite  law,  with  the  sanction  of  Mosaic  authorship  ; 
but  with  much  less  esteem  for  the  prophetical  writings,  and 
rejecting  the  idea  of  a  future  life  ;  not  courteous  in  their  manners 
(so  Josephus  tells  us)  but  not  pohtically  restless.  At  the  other 
extreme  of  disposition  and  conduct  were  the  Essenes,  ascetics 
in  principle,  associating  hardly  at  all  in  public  affairs  ;  discourag- 
ing marriage,  though  not  wholly  forbidding  it ;  practising  the 
ceremonial  law  with  care  ;  intent  upon  love  to  God  and  love  to 
man ;  believers  in  immortality.  From  the  gentle  ardour  of 
the  Essenes  a  rebellious  spirit  was  totally  alien  ;  in  them  lay 
no  seed  of  danger.  Nor  would  the  Sadducees,  taken  in  themselves, 
have  been  a  provocative  element ;  they  had  too  little  fervour. 
But  the  enthusiastic  hopes  of  the  Jews  had  their  chief  abode 
in  the  third  party,  the  Pharisees.  Like  the  Essenes,  the  Pharisees 
were  fervent ;  like  the  Essenes,  they  practised  a  strict  ceremonial ; 
like  the  Essenes,  they  believed  in  immortal  life  and  in  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  dead.  But  unlike  the  Essenes,  they  mingled  with 
the  world  ;  unlike  the  Essenes,  they  displayed  their  feelings 
publicly  ;  and  their  feelings  contained  such  a  sense  of  superiority 
to  heathen  races,  their  principles  were  so  imbued  with  that 
separatism  on  which  Ezra  had  insisted  (and  which  the  name 
Pharisee  implies),  that  other  nations  could  hardly  look  upon 
them  with  equanimity.  Flatterers  they  were  not ;  they  had 
withstood  the  powerful  John  Hyrcanus  to  his  face  ;  and  if  their 
obedience  to  the  ceremonial  law  was  servile,  they  were  teachers 
also  of  the  moral  law,  and  the  close  brotherhood  of  Jews  to  each 
other  was  in  great  part  due  to  their  teaching.  That  they  were 
wise  counsellors  of  their  own  nation  cannot  be  affirmed  •    but 


XV]         TAKES  TO  ITSELF  EARTHLY  ARMOUR         407 

the  extreme  difficulty  of  the  problem  before  them  must  be 
remembered.  Respecting  the  fourth  party  among  the  Jews, 
the  Zealots,  it  need  only  be  said  that  they  were  the  extreme 
wing  of  the  Pharisees,  that  the  title  of  fanatics  was  justly  applicable 
to  them. 

Upon  the  Jewish  nation,  so  lofty  in  their  thoughts,  and  yet 
so  perplexed  and  erring,  now  burst  like  a  thunderclap  the  cry 
of  John  the  Baptist,  "  Repent  ye  ;  for  the  kingdom  of  the  heavens 
is  at  hand."  How  should  that  manifestation  take  place  ?  That 
was  the  question  of  questions. 


END  OF  VOLUME  I 


CAMBRIDGE:    PRINTED  BY  J.   B.  PEACE,  M.A.,  AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


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